
NEW YORK 



VAN DYKE 



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THE NEW NEW YORK 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOM BAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




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THE OLD AND THE NEW 



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NEW NEW YORK 



A COMMENTARY ON THE PLACE 
AND THE PEOPLE 



BY 

JOHN C. VAN DYKE 



ILLUSTRATED 
BY JOSEPH PENNELL 



Webj gorfe 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1909 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1909, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1909. 



Nortoooli IPrfBB 

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



r.i 4 24fJ3 28 
SEP 7 1909 



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Co 

GEORGE B. McCLELLAN 

WHOSE EFFORTS IN MUNICIPAL ART HAVE IDENTIFIED 

HIM WITH THE NEW CITY 

THIS BOOK 

IS DEDICATED BY BOTH THE WRITER 

AND THE ILLUSTRATOR 



PREFACE 

The title of this book describes it with sufficient 
accuracy. The new city is pictured rather than the 
old; the present appearance is recited rather than the 
history of Dutch and English successions. This, of 
course, implies limitations, but not necessarily a meager 
field of survey. The difficulty has been, not the paucity, 
but the prodigality of the materials. Where one should 
begin has presented as much of a problem as where one 
should leave off. Besides, in a swift-expanding city like 
New York everything is more or less confused by move- 
ment, by casual phenomena, by want of definition. Self- 
imposed barriers are necessary to keep one from being 
lost in the vastness of the swirl. 

The writer and the illustrator have not escaped the 
embarrassment of many points of view, but gradually 
the belief has come to them that, pictorially, the larger 
aspect of New York is the life and energy of its people 
projected upon the background of its commerce. It is 
this character of the place and its inhabitants that they 
have sought to set forth, convinced that character is 
interesting in itself, and that true municipal beauty must 



viii PREFACE 

be more or less beholden to it. Those who believe only 

in the planned and plotted city will, no doubt, shake their 

heads over this; but many times in civic story the 

characteristic has proved more attractive than the formal. 

It has been demonstrated in the present day, here in New 

York. Those who have erected the new city, as need has 

dictated, have builded better than they knew. They 

have given us, not the classic, but the picturesque — a 

later and perhaps a more interesting development. 

At least such is the chief contention of this book. With 

what reason or conviction it is pictured or argued is the 

privilege of the reader to decide. Therefore let us leave 

off explanations and begin. 

J. C. V. D. 

New York, May, 1909. 



I 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGB 

I. Introduction 1 

II. The Approach from the Sea 21 

III. Seasonal Impressions 41 

IV. The Streets in the Morning 59 

V. Down Town 77 

VI. Sky-scrapers 93 

VII. The New City 113 

VIII. Ancient Landmarks 131 

IX. The Ebb Tide 149 

X. Fifth Avenue at Four 169 

XL Shops and Shopping 187 

XII. New York by Night 205 

XIII. Homes and Houses 221 

XIV. The Bowery 237 

XV. The Tenement Dwellers 253 

XVL City Guardians 271 

XVII. The Bridges 291 

XVIII. The Water-ways 309 

XIX. Docks and Ships 325 

XX. Breathing Spaces 341 

XXI. Municipal Art 357 

XXIL For Mere Culture 371 

XXIIL The Islands 387 

XXTV. The Larger City 401 

XXV. Traffic and Trade 417 



PLATES IN COLOR 



The Old and the New 



I. Madison Square .... 

II. Battery Park near Bowling (ireeu 

III. Washington Square 

IV. The Plaza 

V. Lower Broadway — Election Time 

VI. Building a Sky-scraper 

VII. New York Times Building 

VIII. The City Hall and World Building 

IX. Hudson Park (Greenwich) 

X. Fifth Avenue through the Washington Arch 

XI. Broadway from Madison Square 

XII. Coney Island — on the Beach 

XIII. Apartment Houses, Upper Broadway 

XIV. Chinatown .... 
XV. Bleecker Street . 

XVI. Second Avenue . 

XVII. High Bridge, Harlem Puver 

XVIII. Near the Battery 

XIX. Near the Shipping District 

XX. Morningside Park 

XXI. Entrance Prospect Park, Brooklyn 

XXII. University of New York 

XXIII. Governors Island 

XXIV. Elevated Road at One Hundred and Twenty-F 
XXV. Along Riverside Drive .... 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

2 

22 
42 
60 
78 
94 
114 
132 
150 
170 
188 
206 
222 
238 
254 
272 
292 
310 
32(i 
342 
358 
372 
388 
402 
418 



ifth Street 



PLATES IN BLACK AND WHITE 



1. Lower Bay 

2. New York from Upper Bay 

3. A Nearer View .... 

4. Ferries and Sky-scrapers 

5. Coney Island from Bay 

6. Crossing Ferries .... 

7. Docks and Slips .... 

8. New York Custom House . 

9. The Flatiron (Fuller Building) . 

10. New York in Rain (Park Avenue) 

11. Fort Lee in Haze 

12. Lower City in Mist 

13. Broadway — Down Town . 

14. Broad Street .... 

15. Ann Street 

16. Exchange Place .... 

17. Park Row Building . 

18. City Investment and Singer Buildings 

19. Terminal Buildings from West Street 

20. Little Flatiron — Maiden Lane . 

21. Sky-scrapers from Brooklyn Heights . 

22. Working at Night on Foundations 

23. Among the Tall Buildings . 

24. Post Office and City Hall Park . 

25. Looking down Madison Avenue . 

26. Metropolitan Museum and Eighty-Second 

27. West Street Building .... 

28. Singer Building — Early Evening 

29. Trinity Churchyard .... 



Street 



FACING PAGE 
1 

7 

10 

16 

24 

28 

35 

37 

44 

46 

49 

51 

62 

64 

71 

74 

85 

87 

90 

92 

99 

103 

106 

110 

117 

119 

122 

124 

135 



XIV 



PLATES IN BLACK AND WHITE 



30. St. Paul's and Park Row Building 

31. St. Paul's — Interior . 

32. The Aquarium, Battery Park 

33. Post Office from St. Paul's Porch 

34. Mott Street 

35. The New Tombs, Center Street . 

36. Grace Church, Broadway . 

37. Fifth Avenue at Thirty-Fourth Street 

38. St. Patrick's Cathedral from Madison Avenue 

39. Upper Fifth Avenue .... 

40. Fifth Avenue from Metropolitan Museum 

41. Broadway near Tenth Street 

42. Twenty-Third Street . 

43. Altraan's, Fifth Avenue 

44. Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue 

45. Sherman Statue — Evening 

46. Upper Broadway — Night . 

47. Plaza by JMoonlight . 

48. Sherry's (left) and Delmonico's (right) 

49. Beginning of Madison Avenue 

50. Madison Avenue Houses 

51. Fifth Avenue Houses . 

52. The Ansonia 

53. The Bowery 

54. Elevated Road on the Bowery 

55. Across the Bowery looking East 

56. Jewish Cemetery (near Bowery) 

57. Tenements near Brooklyn Bridge 

58. East River Tenements 

59. Elevated Road on Second Avenue 

60. Recreation Pier .... 

61. Police Headquarters . 

62. Criminal Court Building . 

63. Bridge of Sighs .... 



FAriJfO PAGE 

138 
145 
147 
158 
160 
163 
105 
172 
174 
177 
184 
192 
199 
200 
202 
209 
215 
216 
218 
224 
231 
232 
234 
240 
247 
248 
250 
261 
263 
260 
268 
275 
279 
282 



PLATES IN BLACK AND WHITE xv 

FACING PAGK 

64. Site of New Municipal Building 286 

65. Brooklyn Bridge 295 

66. Manhattan Bridge (in construction) 298 

67. East River Bridge 305 

68. Bridges on the Harlem 307 

69. The Lower Hudson from Singer Tower 318 

70. The East River 320 

71. The Lower East River 323 

72. The Harlem 325 

73. Old Ships, South Street 332 

74. The Mauretania 334 

75. Tugs and Steamers 337 

76. From Coenties Slip 341 

77. Lake in the Central Park 348 

78. St. Nicholas Avenue 352 

79. Palisades and Hudson 355 

80. Riverside Drive — Grant's Tomb 357 

81. St. John the Divine (in construction) 364 

82. Ward's Pilgrim, the Central Park 366 

83. Fountain on Riverside Drive 369 

84. Soldier's Monument, Riverside Drive 371 

85. New York Botanical Museum, Bronx Park .... 376 

86. Public Library, Fifth Avenue 382 

87. College of the City of New York 384 

88. Hall of Fame, University of New York 386 

89. Bedloes Island — Statue of Liberty 391 

90. Island from the Battery 394 

91. Staten Island Factories 396 

92. East River Islands from Jeiferson Park 400 

93. Fort George by Night 405 

94. Pennsylvania Railroad Station (in construction) . . . 407 

95. East River from WiUiamsburgh Bridge 410 

96. Brooklyn Bridge from Ferry Shed 412 

97. West Street looking North 421 

98. East River — Brooklyn Side 424 





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CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

Constantinople, seen in the early evening from the 
Marmora, is perhaps the most beautiful city in the world. 
It lifts from the water, takes form from out the opales- 
cent distance, like some vision of The Thousand and 
One Nights Entertainment. The yellow walls and towers 
of old Byzantium, the red-tiled buildings that crowd 
along the seven hills of Stamboul, the silver-domed 
mosques of Achmet, of Mohammed, of Bajazet, the dark 
green cypresses in the Seraglio Gardens, the restless water 
at one's feet, the wonderful light that seems always 
overhead, and the rosy air that blends them all into 
harmony, make up a picture never to be forgotten. 
The glamour and the romance of the East become, for 
the moment, realities. The realm of enchantment lies 
just before you. 

As the ship draws nearer and swings around Seraglio 
Point into the Golden Horn, new vistas of even greater 
splendor open and deepen. The harbor with its forests 
of masts, the Galata Bridge — the whole eastern side 
of the city — lie in the shadow of the Stamboul hills ; 
the domes of Sancta Sophia lift against the sunset west, 

3 



4 THE NEW NEW YORK 

a violet light gathers about the minarets of the mosque 
of Solymon, the rosy air turns into a golden mist, and 
through it the towers of Pera look supernaturally splendid, 
Haroun al Raschid, in fancy free, never built a city more 
beautiful ! It is a dream city. If you touch it, it will 
fade away and leave only a grouping of harsh facts. 

But touch it you must whether you will or will not. 
You are disembarked, sent ashore, and, at first, are de- 
lighted with the way certain colors in shop fronts, flags, 
and costumes ''cut out," with the quaintness of rambling 
buildings, with the ships and crowds and all the barbaric 
yawp of the streets. But presently you begin to lose the 
ensemble. The light and atmosphere no longer bind 
together. The forms of buildings become grotesque, the 
streets grow squalid, the people, the dogs, the horses, make 
up a mean and hideous entanglement of life ; the noises 
are deafening, the odors unbearable, the filth untellable. 
Before the stars are out you have possibly concluded 
(and not without reason) that Constantinople may be 
beautiful at a distance, and picturesque in spots close 
at hand ; but that it certainly is not architectural, not 
structural, not a homogeneous civic unit like Paris. The 
larger elements of design and system are lacking. It is 
something that just "happened." 

Singularly enough there is in New York a superficial 
likeness to Constantinople. Even the height and location 
of the ground with the contours cut by the rivers are not 



INTRODUCTION 5 

dissimilar. A glance at the map will show the Hudson 
corresponding to the Marmora, the East River to the 
Golden Horn, the Upper Bay to the Bosporus. Other 
resemblances derive naturally from these. Manhattan be- 
comes recognizable as Stamboul, the Battery as Seraglio 
Point, Brooklyn as the heights of Pera, Staten Island as 
Scutari. Even the Brooklyn Bridge can be tortured into a 
resemblance to the Galata Bridge, and the Williamsburgh 
Bridge is an exaggerated suggestion of the upper bridge on 
the Golden Horn. 

The likeness carries on (fancifully if you will) into the 
impression produced at first sight. Both cities are seen 
at their best from the water; both are beautiful from a 
distance and for a similar reason. Light and color 
gleaming from towers and spires and pinnacles, a fore- 
ground of water, a background of blue sky, a rosy-blue 
envelope of air, make up the attractive quality of each. 
The white sky-scraper of New York, that thoughtless 
people jeer at, catches light as readily as a Moslem mina- 
ret; the solid ''blocks" standing shoulder to shoulder 
along the streets, the bunched group of high buildings in 
the lower city, make up walls more massive than those 
of Stamboul ; and if New York lacks the silvery domes 
of Constantinople, it is not without its tall towers flying 
flags against the blue, and such graceful traceries in the 
air as the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. 

Seen from a point in the Upper Bay where the Brooklyn 



6 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Bridge first comes into view and the sky-scrapers in the 
lower city crowd together Hke distant mountain peaks, 
New York is more striking, more impressive, than any other 
city on the globe. It looms through the blue mist, not 
with any Oriental romance about it, but with a feeling of 
tremendous bulk and power. The mass of it makes you 
realize the energy back of it, excites a wonder as to its 
fashioning, overawes you with its possibilities. There is 
no mystery here. New York is not a dream city. It is 
as real as the mountain walls of the Alps, as apparent as 
the white shaft of the Matterhorn, but picturesque in a 
similar way and for a similar reason. The Alpine, lift 
of it, the clear light of it, the brilliant color, the serene 
sky, the enveloping air, are peculiarly beautiful. 

But as you come closer to the city, the measurable 
likeness to Constantinople returns to you. The illusion 
produced by distance begins to fade. Color once more ' ' cuts 
out" in sharp patches, the tall buildings lose their grouping 
and assume tower-like isolation ; the light becomes more 
fierce, the shadows more violent. The picture gets out of 
tone, out of value. The contrasts appear so sharp, the 
transitions so swift, that you are perhaps bewildered. The 
grotesque and the grandiose, the savage and the civilized, 
the luxurious and the poverty-stricken, touch on every 
side. 

Once in the streets all thought of a united and harmoni- 
ous picture vanishes into thin air. Jostling details, 



INTRODUCTION 7 

harsh realities, are flung at you too violently to be merged 
into an ensemble. The picturesque still crops out in 
spots and patches at every turn, but it requires some men- 
tal (and physical) firmness to stop and enjoy it. There is 
a great movement going on about you, a surge of struggling 
humanity; and there is a great roar, the metallic-electric 
hum of power in action. If you are a stranger within the 
gates perhaps this means chaos to you, sheer mob mad- 
ness ; and possibly before nightfall you will have concluded 
that Manhattan, like Constantinople, is lacking in homoge- 
neity, wholly wanting in structural unity, in fact a mere 
agglomeration of buildings on a point of land. The check- 
erboard '^blocks," the recurrent regularity of streets, you 
admit, point to something planned ; but the buildings are 
eruptive and the whole city abnormal — something again 
that apparently just ''happened." 

There is an explanation, if not an excuse, for this. 
The city belongs to a republic, a great democracy. It is 
very apparent in New York that every one stands firmly 
on his rights as an individual, and does about as he pleases. 
Architectural conformity to a general design is something 
not required, not planned, not even contemplated. Quite 
the reverse. If your neighbor does a thing one way, it is 
considered a proper assertion of your rights to do it the 
other way. If an office building soars twenty stories into 
the air, a bank building near it will more than likely stop at 
a story and a half. If one lifts upward in terra-cotta, the 



8 . THE NEW NEW YORK 

other will flatten out in white marble. After thirty years 
of brick and stone fronts in monotonous row, block upon 
block, a great change has come over the spirit of the dream 
and now, in the new buildings, the other extreme is sought. 
Nothing shall be like anything else, nothing shall conform 
except by the law of contrariety. In materials brick shall 
meet granite, and granite shall join to steel, and steel be fol- 
lowed by marble or terra-cotta or concrete ; but two of a 
kind shall not stand side by side. And never by design 
or acquiescence shall adjoining buildings be of the same 
color. Even in brick there is forever the slight difference 
in coloring, caused by the different clay, the firing, or the 
pigmentation, that marks apart one's building from his 
neighbor's and thus asserts an individuality. 

The assertion of the individual is possibly the cause of 
the city's architectural incongruities. Everyone seems 
struggling as hard as he can to keep from losing himself 
in the body corporate. There are very few who wish to 
be simply citizens, to conform to civic laws, and to temper 
architectural aspirations to a sky line or a curb line. The 
average New York business man wants no self-effacement, 
no simple life. On the contrary, publicity, commercially 
and socially, is sought for; and being "in the public 
eye," as the phrase goes, seems to be the one thing needful. 
The buildings of the new city are more or less reflective 
of this obtrusive individuality. The love of prominence 
has produced homes and stores and sky-scrapers that are, if 



INTRODUCTION 9 

convenient and useful, not the less blatant advertisements 
of their owners' families or businesses. What other 
object could induce an individual, or an aggregation of 
individuals, to build a silverware shop that suggests an 
overgrown Venetian palace, or apartment houses, French, 
Italian, Greek, Moorish, Turkish, in their ornamentation, 
or hotels after almost any and every plan on the footstool 
that is unique or striking? What is the meaning of the 
keen rivalry among the owners of the high buildings as to 
which shall be the highest, and the vaporizings in the 
newspapers about which has the greatest number of occu- 
pants? Half of the ''freak" buildings in New York are 
not well-meant architectural failures, but deliberate efforts 
to catch the eye and advertise someone or his wares. 
Even the creditable buildings — substantial structures 
that are not to be despised as art and cannot be regarded 
wholly as advertisements — reflect, in measure, the de- 
sire for distinction, for aloofness, for novelty. How 
otherwise can we understand a Greek temple worked over 
and made to do service as a stock-exchange, or a Roman 
arch adapted to meet the requirements of a clearing-house, 
or a sixteenth-century Veronese council hall exaggerated 
into a printing-shop? The desire for singularity is quite 
as pronounced in dwelling houses. French chateaux that 
are meaningless without their landscapes, Dutch houses 
that need water as a complement, Swiss chalets that 
belong in the Alps, and Palladian conglomerations that 



10 THE NEW NEW YORK 

perhaps once belonged in Italy, measure up to a common 
curb and look down into the same asphalt street with the 
brown-stone front of yore. Evidently these people pro- 
pose to have nothing monotonous or conventional, cost 
what it may; and though they imitate the dead and 
gone of England or Spain, they will not copy their next- 
door neighbors. 

This cry of the individual in brick and stone and steel, 
this strain for novelty or peculiarity or mere ^'loudness," 
produces variety enough in all conscience. And it also 
produces picturesqueness, but one can hardly claim for it 
unity. There is a want of coherence, of ensemble. No 
amount of civic pride can find excuse for the inconsisten- 
cies that crop out at every point, and it is impossible to 
be in sympathy with the stupidities and inanities per- 
petrated by the semi-civilized that flock into New York 
and by mere numbers give a savage tang to the city. In 
fact, the savagery of New York is at first more marked 
than its civilization, its vices more pronounced than its 
virtues. Wherever one goes he finds these sharply con- 
trasted. What else could be expected ! A million people 
with a million tastes and perfect freedom to express them 
as they please, a chorus where each member is allowed to 
sing his own tune in his own way, mean necessarily a 
want of harmony. New York is not a harmonious sym- 
metrical city like Paris, and the fact is generally conceded 
by New Yorkers themselves. 



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INTRODUCTION 11 

Nor is it a restful city. Aside from the noise of it, 
the very sight of it keeps you ever on the alert. The long 
avenues of Paris dwindling away in linear perspective, 
the roof lines as unbroken as the curb lines, might put you 
to sleep with their undisturbed repose. The sameness 
of Madrid or the uniformity of new Rome, or the cast-iron 
dullness of Berlin are likewise conducive to somnolence. 
But when you drive through New York you have to look 
about you. Its variety is startling, disturbing, even 
shocking at times. It is a city quite by itself, a city of 
contrasts, with as little rest in its sky line as in the ragged 
mountains of Mexico, as little repose in its streets as in the 
lava stream of a volcano. Oh, to be sure, there are quiet 
spots in the parks and along the rivers, quaint nooks in 
the side streets, odd angles here and there where every- 
thing is so still it is difficult to realize that you are in New 
York at all. Everyone knows these spots, with their door- 
ways and garden walls and overhanging trees, for the 
magazine writer has written about them and the painter 
has illustrated them many times; but they are merely 
surface spots, — the exceptions, not the rule. The place 
is no quieter than its loudest note, no more restful than 
the inside of its stock-exchange, no more reposeful than 
the reach of its most aggressive sky-scraper. 

And hence, it is said, the city is an unlivable place; 
a great shop in which people barter and sell, get rich quick 
and die early, but cannot rationally live and have their 



12 THE NEW NEW YORK 

being. Perhaps there is truth in that statement, as we 
shall see hereafter, and yet several millions of people who 
are now existent within the city, and unknown millions 
without who wish they could arrange to live within, would 
seem to confute it. They live somehow and have the 
appearance of enjoying life, though it may be they never, 
arrive at the fullness of being vouchsafed to people in 
staid London or methodical Berlin. 

Perhaps a general statement that no city is quite as 
healthful and rational a place to live in as the country 
would be nearer the truth. The herding together of 
people in great centers, the incessant milling that goes 
on in the streets, the continual rubbing of minds and 
touching of hands, with one man's elbow in another man's 
ribs, and his toe forever galling his neighbor's kibe, are 
things that never yet led to the development of the 
virtues. They breed selfishness and all its allied train 
of evils, and they tend necessarily to the lawless assertion 
of the individual, which in turn produces that want of 
harmony which we have already noted. It might be 
better morally and physically for families to live farther 
apart and see each other less frequently. But evidently 
they do not think so. They answer the academic ques- 
tion as to which is preferable, city or country, by moving 
into the cities — at least a great many do. 

And the flocking into New York is greater than into 
any other American metropolis. It draws like a load- 



INTRODUCTION 13 

stone not only from our own interior states, but from 
foreign countries. Its increase from without when seen 
in statistics is something remarkable. And each year 
gives a higher figure. Why is this ? Why do they come ? 
Why do they not stay where they are or go to some other 
place ? Obviously because they find New York attractive, 
entertaining, amusing, perhaps improving. 

Does the city then respond to Matthew Arnold's test 
of a civilization: ''Is it interesting?" Most assuredly. 
It is the most interesting place in the New World, and 
that is the chief reason, aside from business relations, 
why people keep trooping to it from all points of the com- 
pass. There is ''something to see there" is the way the 
response comes to you. Naturally it depends upon each 
individual what he sees and if it interests him. Some 
are content with seeing streets and shop windows; some 
seek the charm of the Central Park ; some are amused by 
monuments, museums, and theaters; some are delighted 
with the Stock Exchange, the Subway, the Bowery, or 
the Battery. Thousands are interested in fires, parades, 
slums, and police ; and thousands again are devoted only 
to art, music, literature, or the sciences. 

But the omnipresent interest of New York — to New 
Yorkers themselves as well as outsiders — is the passing 
throng, the great flux, the moving mass of people on the 
streets. It may be an outcrop of the social instinct or 
merely a vagabond curiosity, but almost everyone is 



14 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ready to crane his neck to watch the mob as it passes. 
The interest is usually of a superficial nature. We may 
be looking only at heads and faces, at strides and strad- 
dles, at fools and fashions; but still we look. Nor is 
this interest confined to any one class or quarter of the 
city. The man who watches the people hurrying along 
Fifth Avenue from his club window, or the woman who 
scans them through a lorgnette from the window of her 
brougham, are, in this respect at least, akin to the tene- 
ment house family that watches the crowd from a fire- 
escape, or to the scullery maid who hangs half her person 
out of the back window to see the tops of people's hats. 
The human interest is always absorbing. 

What causes this never-ending ebb and flow of human 
currents up and down the avenues and through the cross 
streets? Whence comes this uneasy energy so manifest 
in New York life? What is the initial force that sends 
wave after wave of humanity hither and yon each morn- 
ing and evening, and makes of New York a city of almost 
perpetual movement? Undoubtedly the motive power 
comes from commerce, trade, traffic, — what is commonly 
called ''business." The energy is generated by wealth, 
its pursuit or its expenditure. And the wealth is here 
in New York more than in any other American city. 
It has not all been created here by any means. In fact, 
it represents the industry of almost every state in the 
union. Generally speaking the source of power lies 



INTRODUCTION 15 

without, in the surrounding country, in the productive 
Far West perhaps ; but the central dynamos are in New 
York. It is the power house by the sea where the energy 
is stored, and from which in turn energy is suppHed, 

There will be those to rise up with indignant protest 
that there are other things in New York than trade and 
commerce. Quite true. The leaders in art, literature, 
music, and the drama, the great ones in law and medicine, 
the famous preachers, the celebrities in science, in en- 
gineering, in philanthropy, in political life, have their 
headquarters if not always their residences here. In 
addition the city is stocked to overflowing with schools, 
colleges, universities, societies, clubs, charity organiza- 
tions, hospitals, lecture halls, museums, art galleries — 
all the appurtenances and appliances of the higher and 
the intellectual life. But the sky-scraper of commerce 
looms above the university and the art gallery on the 
horizon line of the city; and the master builder of the 
sky-scraper, the so-called captain of industry, seems to 
fill the most conspicuous place in the interest and affec- 
tions of the city's people. For all its facilities and its 
acquisitions of a purely intellectual or educational nature 
— and we shall recount them hereafter — the key-note 
of the city is taken from its commerce. The enormous 
buildings, the roar of traffic in the streets, the babel of 
tongues, the glare of lights, the strident screech of car 
wheels, speak the business character of the city as the 



16 THE NEW NEW YORK 

hum of a top its spinning motion. If there is one feature 
of the city predominant above all others it is its life, 
its vitality, its tremendous energy kept forever in action 
by commerce. 

A material feature? Yes, but.it calls for no apology. 
All the famed towns of Europe — Florence, Venice, 
Vienna, Paris, London — came to greatness through 
their wealth and commerce. Their streets and parks 
and plazas, their public buildings and cathedrals and 
campaniles which we to-day call "beautiful," were in 
their time merely the manifestation of energy as applied 
to material needs. And they were beautiful largely 
because they were well fitted to their time and people. 
Fitness to a designed end is always admirable, just as 
admirable in a modern battleship or sky-scraper as in 
a Venetian barca or a mediaeval bell-tower. For where- 
ever or whenever the work is perfectly adapted to use 
it takes upon itself character; and it is no new theory 
under the sun that beauty lies in character perhaps more 
often than in proportion, symmetry, or grace. 

Why not then beauty in the city of New York? Is 
not everything in it well fitted (or rapidly becoming 
so at least) to fulfill its functions as a great seaport, a 
commercial center, a nation's metropolis? Has it not 
already a distinct, a decisive character of its own? Of 
course it will never become beautiful in a Florentine or 
even a Parisian sense. Those ideals of fitness have 




Pl. 4.^ — 1'kkkiks and Skv-sckapeks 



INTRODUCTION 17 

passed, and the likeness will not be repeated in this 
western world. Why should we follow outworn prece- 
dents? What would you have in twentieth-century 
New York, — city walls affording no protection to the city, 
lofty campanili with bell-ringing obsolescent, quaint 
bridges for a few hundred foot-passengers, instead of great 
structures to accommodate hundreds of thousands? 
This new civilization calls for a different expression in 
art from that. It calls for the things that reveal our 
western life and its energy. If we build for our present- 
day needs with honesty and sincerity, we shall have no 
cause to blush. 

This, however, to the average man, in or out of New 
York, is a somewhat violent conclusion. He blushes 
unconsciously and offers apologies profusely for the 
sky-scrapers, the tunnels, the bridges, the subways. 
But there is no good reason for his doing so. They are 
necessities of the city's life, they work perfectly, fulfilling 
each its aim and purpose, each helping on the other like 
the wheels of a great machine in motion. And after their 
kind they are every one of them right, characteristic, 
and beautiful. Their fitness makes them so. 

But how very difficult it is to make the New Yorker 
believe that utility is the basis of beauty. He keeps 
harking back to Venetian buildings and bridges, think- 
ing perhaps because they are now picturesque they never 
could have been useful. ''Will New York ever become 



18 THE NEW NEW YORK 

like that?" he asks. No; it certainly will not. But 
in its own way it is just as beautiful, just as picturesque 
at the present time, as London or Paris or any other 
European city. 

Unfortunately, though we have eyes, the majority of us 
see very little with them. Not one in a hundred of its 
citizens has ever seen New York. It is too near. There 
is no perspective, no proper focus. Even our painter 
people are a little bewildered by its '^bigness." They 
do scraps of color, odd bits along the Harlem, a city 
square or street; but, with a few exceptions, they have 
not risen to the vast new city. That the ''big" things, 
the high bridges, the colossal sky-scrapers, the huge 
factories, the enormous waterways, are pictorial in them- 
selves needs no wordy argument. The illustrations in 
this volume are sufficient proof. In them Mr. Pennell 
has shown that the material is here and that it needs 
only the properly-adjusted eyes to see its beauty. That 
beauty, in the original as in the pictures, is not a harmony 
of streets, squares, and houses, nor a formal arrange- 
ment of monuments, towers, and domes ; but rather a new 
sublimity that lies in majesty of mass, in aspiring lines 
against the upper sky, in the brilliancy of color, in the 
mystery of fields of shadow, in the splendor of fields of 
light, — above all in the suggested power and energy 
of New York life. 

This is all uniquely western, if you please, and those 



INTRODUCTION 19 

who visit us from Europe rather smile at it as men have 
done at all new things from time immemorial; but at 
least they come to see the new city and some day they 
may remain to praise it. One thing is certain, it cannot 
be ignored. It has too much character for that. 



THE APPEOACH FROM THE SEA 



Pl. 11. BATTERY PARK NEAR BOWl.U^G GREEN 



M33MO OlllJWOa ^lAai-l »51Aq YH3TTAa .11 .jS 




K 



/ ' Mm .:%^*^ '*i<3*l 






^^ 



CHAPTER II 

THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 

After the rain and fog of London, after six or seven 
days of knocking about on an ocean liner in wet Septem- 
ber weather, how welcome to the homeward-bound 
traveller is the glimpse of American sunlight that perhaps 
comes to him off Nantucket. It is not European sun- 
light. It seems brighter, more sparkling, more luminous. 
The sky, too, is higher, arches into a loftier dome, shows 
a finer, paler quality of blue; while the clouds are dif- 
ferent from any seen north of the Alps. In the late 
afternoon great heaps of cumulus lift in pink turrets 
and towers along the southern horizon, thin veils of 
stratus are drawn across their sunlit tops, and high above 
them, white as snow, gleam the feathery forms of the 
cirrus. It seems a fairy cloudland illuminated by a 
silver sun. 

The first exclamation of the stranger in America is 
over the sunlight and the sky. New York is a thousand 
miles south, two thousand miles west, of London, and 
its light has a clean clear quality about it that is im- 
pressive. But no one exclaims over the first glimpse of 
American land. The ship's company looks at it list- 

23 



24 THE NEW NEW YORK 

lessly, for it is only a flat strip of dull yellow, lying low 
down upon the water to the north, with occasionally a 
dimly seen lighthouse rising from it. Almost any land 
in the world — England, France, Spain, Mexico, Peru — 
lifts out of the sea with a more commanding relief than 
America at the approach to New York Bay. The cliffs 
of Cornwall or the Pillars of Hercules one can grow 
enthusiastic over; but the sand spits of Long Island or 
New Jersey make no impression — except, of course, 
upon the returning native. 

Even the hills of Navesink and Sandy Hook, with its 
smartly painted buildings, are somehow passed by in 
silence. No one comments or grows emotional over 
them. But when Swinburne and Hoffman islands 
and the shores of Staten Island rise into prominence, 
there is a visible interest stirred throughout the ship. 
The pent-up steerage crowds against the rail and chatters 
excitedly; and even the complacent first-cabin ventures 
a few remarks on the green grass, the bright-colored 
houses, the warm sky. 

As the ship moves up into the Narrows, passing in 
the distance the white towers of Coney Island and 
close at hand the green and gray of Fort Tompkins and 
Fort Hamilton, the interest spreads. The rails above 
and below are manned with peering people. The houses, 
the gardens, the trees, the flowers of Staten Island are 
almost within stone-throwing distance ; and they all look 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 25 

so preternaturally bright and beautiful that many 
adjectives are forthcoming. Even the not-too-observant 
foreigner begins to notice the sparkle of light on 
the water, the clearness of the air, the variety of the 
foliage, the gayety of the coloring. 

Presently the vibration of the vessel ceases, but the 
ship still moves with her own impetus slowly up into the 
quarantine grounds. Tugs and yachts and small boats 
gather about her, like fisher folk around a stranded 
whale ; but they do not try to board her. The tug coming 
out from the shore flying a yellow flag carries the health 
officer of the port; and he must make his inspection 
before any one is allowed to go on board. Once more the 
port rail is crowded with heads protruding to get a 
glimpse of the great man coming up the ship's ladder. 
How very small he looks and what a long way down he 
is ! The monster proportions of the ship tend to dwarf 
everything about her — people and tugs, trees and houses, 
hills on the shore and distances on the water. From the 
thin air and the clear light one is led to believe that a 
conversation could be carried on with the people on the 
Staten Island shore ; but they are something over half 
a mile away. And from the name ''The Narrows," 
given to the strait through which the ship has just come, 
one might gather the impression that it is really a narrow 
strip of water, whereas it is a mile wide. 

The medical inspection is soon through with, people 



26 THE NEW NEW YORK 

from tugs and yachts and steamboats begin to climb up 
the vessel's side, sending and receiving shouts of recog- 
nition from expectant friends. Perhaps an excursion 
steamer comes hurrying down the bay with a band of 
music, flying flags, and several hundred cheering throats 
to welcome home some congressman or senator whose 
greatness the ship's company had not suspected until 
now. Once more the ship gets under way and steams 
into the Upper Bay. Everybody is now on the alert. 
The shores are beginning to show many docks, factories, 
warehouses, elevators, all the queer buildings to be 
found about the entrance of a great harbor; the Statue 
of Liberty on Bedloe's Island rises in huge proportions ; 
and presently there is a hum that runs along the ship 
and all eyes are set and staring dead ahead, up the bay. 
Slowly, as the vessel turns on her course, the towering 
sky-scrapers of lower New York, and the spider-web 
tracery of the Brooklyn Bridge come into view. Faint 
and far the city lies, like a distant sierra. Nothing is 
distinct as yet. It is only a suggestion, but, like Mont 
Blanc seen from Geneva, what a sense of height it gives 
one ! It is not a city on a hill gaining grandeur from its 
elevated position; on the contrary it rises almost sheer 
from the water's edge, — almost like Venice from her 
lagoon islands. No one who has come up to Venice by 
water in the evening light is likely to forget the loveliness 
of that city by the sea with its fairy palaces lifting out 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 27 

of the blue-green tide, its high silver domes of the Salute, 
its lofty campanili, its wondrous color. It is one of the 
sights of the world. But New York is all dome, all 
campanile, all towering splendor as you see it from the 
Upper Bay; and it has an even greater wealth of color 
than Venice, a sharper light, a more luminous shadow. 
It will not stand close analysis so well as the City of the 
Doges; but at a distance it is superbly picturesque, 
grandly beautiful. 

With this far city in view and the mind groping at its 
proportions, trying to imagine its height and girth, the 
steamer, once more, begins to look small; the Statue 
of Liberty seems rather like an ordinary statue; even 
the Upper Bay after the open ocean, seems cramped, 
shut in. The stranger does not quite understand it. 
He has to be told over again that the statue on the island 
stands a hundred and fifty feet above its pedestal, being 
the largest (and about the worst) of its kind in the 
world; that the Upper Bay is five miles wide by five 
or six long, that the ship has been travelling a dozen 
miles through land-locked waters, and that New York 
in the distance is still some miles away. Figures are 
frequently wearisome, if not something of a nuisance ; 
but they are, nevertheless, quite convincing to the scepti- 
cal, and absolutely indispensable to the exotic American. 

Gowanus Bay and the lower end of Brooklyn, Bayonne 
and the lower end of Jersey City, are passed quite un- 



28 THE NEW NEW YORK 

noticed by the passengers. Things of a more immediate 
interest are claiming the attention. Outward-bound 
steamers are passing with flags flying and handker- 
chiefs waving, huge full-rigged ships, riding high out of 
water, are being towed down and out to sea, barks and 
brigs and coasting schooners are following after, and 
lumbering in the rear come spiteful little tugs wrenching 
at long rows of garbage scows, or hustling along oil 
lighters, or snorting about dredgers or elevator boats. 
Everything whistles at you as it passes, by way of salu- 
tation ; and perhaps the white yacht that is along-side 
escorting the steamer up to her dock, gives a sharp shriek 
in return. Meantime the distant city grows in size, 
lifts higher, seems to peer through its blue atmosphere; 
while over it, over the harbor and over the bay, the clear 
September sunlight is falling, dancing, flashing from 
dome and lofty window and wave facet, wringing color 
out of every ferry-boat, tug, building, greensward, and 
scrap of foliage within the great panorama. 

When Governor's Island, with its round little fort, 
and the Battery, with its charming spot of green, are 
reached, some of the details of the tall buildings begin to 
reveal themselves. The outliers facing on Battery Park 
can be seen from foundation wall to roof line, and counted, 
in twenty or more stories, by the mounting windows. 
But these are only the foot-hills. Further back and 
lifting higher are the central peaks, the main sierras. 




f^ 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 29 

The architectural wonders of the world seem insignifi- 
cant when measured by their scale. The sky line of 
London, for instance, is cut by church domes and 
steeples that look down on the low-lying town; but 
the highest church steeple here is that of Old Trinity, 
two hundred and eighty-four feet in height, which fails 
to rise into sight. It is submerged by its surroundings, 
with the Singer Tower in the lead six hundred and 
thirty-five feet up in the air. Such structures are appro- 
priately enough called ^'sky-scrapers." The tops of them 
reach into the blue, cut into it, seem to ''scrape" 
against it. Almost everyone is impressed or startled or 
outraged by the first sight of them. Even the visiting 
foreigner finds his lively expectation outdone by the 
reality. 

Up into the North River the black muzzle of the 
steamer points, holding her way amid increasing num- 
bers of tugs, ferry-boats, brick schooners, oil lighters 
and car barges. Gradually the bunched appearance of 
the tall buildings begins to change. The group partially 
disintegrates, certain of the taller peaks draw off and 
stand alone, the lower city begins to show its profile. 
This is the view of the city that Mr. Henry James de- 
scribes as like "some colossal hair comb turned upward, 
and so deprived of half its teeth that the others, at their 
uneven intervals, count doubly as sharp spikes." The 
simile has a modicum of truth about it. The want of 



30 THE NEW NEW YORK 

teeth here and there shows that the growth is not com- 
plete, that the city is still in a building stage; but that 
the present sky-line is unattractive can hardly be ad- 
mitted. On the contrary, if seen late in the afternoon 
when the great foundation walls are sunk in shadow, 
when the sun is setting over New Jersey and its yellow 
light flushes the tops of the high buildings and turns 
the window-panes to flaming fire, this profile view of 
the lower city is magnificently grand. There never was 
quite such a mountain barrier made by human hands 
and stretched along the eastern sky at sunset. Even in 
the full light of noonday, with dark shadows flung down 
the great walls and high lights leaping from cornice to 
gilded dome, or at dusk when each house of many thou- 
sand electric lights has its windows illuminated, there 
is still a grandeur of mass, of light, of color, that is most 
imposing. That there is incongruity, want of proportion, 
want of Greek harmony about it, is quite true. But 
perhaps even so severe a critic as Mr. James will admit 
that the problem of New York to-day is quite different 
from the problem of Athens in Periclean times. Athens, 
or at least the beautiful part of it, was built to gratify 
the vanity of the Athenians; New York has been built 
to handle the commerce of the western world. 

Commerce, travel, traffic, seem to proclaim themselves 
from every craft that floats in the harbor and from all 
the docks along the shores. The impulsive ferry-boats, 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 31 

carrying their thousands of commuters to or from New 
Jersey, keep darting back and forth from their slips, im- 
pudently challenging our great liner with short, hoarse 
whistles that indicate they mean to cross our bows. 
They have to ''make a train" and are not to be stopped. 
Long scows loaded with freight-cars are being shoved 
and pushed around the Battery and up to Mott Haven, 
where the cars are transferred to New England railway 
tracks; pile-drivers in tow go staggering up the river to 
the new docks in process of building; great strings of 
canal boats, half a dozen long and three abreast, are 
trailing away toward Raritan Bay ; coal barges in squad- 
rons keep filing past. Everything is moving in the 
interest of commerce. 

Much of this commercial show, in scale and value, 
falls far short of the imposing row of office buildings 
staked out from the Battery to the Plaza. Enough of 
it is petty or mean-looking, as, for instance, the rows and 
rows of pile-docks with long ramshackle pier-sheds 
upon them. True, they serve their purpose fairly well. 
With the necessities for many and quick landings the 
wooden dock that gives instead of breaking with the 
blow is better than the stone dock that might crush or 
bend the plates of a vessel; but not even a very ''good 
American " will argue that they are better-looking and 
make a finer appearance than the stone ones. If the truth 
were told the wooden piers are a shabby, poverty-stricken, 



32 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and patched border for so wealthy a city to be wearing 
on its outer garment. They contrast sharply with the 
huge steamers, the colossal bridges, and the high towers 
of the sky-scrapers — the first contrast perhaps to catch 
the eye of the visitor. 

To be sure, one soon forgets or fails to see these dis- 
cordant items. There is such a bewildering rush at every 
one of the senses as the steamer moves up past the Court- 
landt Street ferry-slip, that the forlorn docks and the 
dirty scows are relegated to the background. Color 
asserts itself. It blares from the many-hued pier-sheds, 
from the white and gold excursion steamers, from the 
red and cream colored funnels of the ocean liners, from 
the magenta ferry-boats, from the terra-cotta, brick, 
and stone buildings. It is too near for any large unity 
or harmony. It comes in patches with some sharpness 
of impact, and is at first (perhaps by contrast with the 
dull blue and green of northern Europe) somewhat gay, 
but agreeably so. There is a stimulus, a tonic effect about 
it that gives intimation of the intensity of life that pre- 
vails in the city and the harbor. It is not the deep 
half-tone, the broken hue, the dull morbid color indicative 
of decay ; on the contrary, it has clearness, even sharpness 
in it, and comes to you like the clarion call of a trumpet. 

And the noise ! The shrieks of passing steamers, the 
discordant notes of harbor craft, the puffing and wheez- 
ing of tugs, the din of escaping steam, clanging bells, 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 33 

howling men are in the air. The deck rails of the 
steamer are manned, and all the passengers above and 
below are in a buzz of excitement, a roar of noise. The 
end of the pier and the windows of the pier-shed are 
bulging with expectant friends, eagerly awaiting the 
docking of the big liner, and all making a noise again. 
Flags are flying, handkerchiefs are waving, everybody 
is talking, a large proportion is shouting. 

The warping-in process, slowly effected by the aid 
of tugs and windlasses, is accompanied by volleys of 
recognitions sent to the steamer from the dock, and 
returned in kind. And such a kind ! The manner in 
which the language is mangled, to say nothing of the 
idioms interpolated, gives one quite a shock. Such 
a beautiful bay and harbor, such wonderful sunlight and 
color, such a marvel of a city in its making; but what 
abominable voices, and what atrocious grammar ! You 
know that the ungrammatical and the slangy are always 
in evidence on such occasions, and that the well-bred 
majority is quiet and unobtrusive; but, nevertheless, 
it gives you a queer feeling. It is another one of the 
contrasts. 

And are those yellow-faced, unkempt, ill-dressed 
stevedores who are sagging heavily over the gang-planks 
the typical workmen of New York? Is that howling 
mass, waving its arms and parasols in the background, 
representative of the city's upper classes? Not neces- 



34 THE NEW NEW YORK 

sarily. A mob is a mob anywhere, and is usually 
gathered together for the purpose of doing those things 
in company that the individual would be ashamed to 
do alone. Not that there is anything reprehensible 
about the crowd that gathers to welcome an ocean- 
steamer, but, good American that you are, you wish it 
were not quite so demonstrative, not quite so "loud." 
You have misgivings that perhaps your foreign acquaint- 
ance on the steamer will accept these people as typical 
of the soil, and you have a notion that the real American 
is somewhat more refined, more dignified than these; in 
fact, not very different from any other educated person. 
To be quite frank, you are somewhat taken aback to find 
so many of your countrymen not so high up socially or 
intellectually as the blue sky or even a down-town sky- 
scraper. 

The gang-planks are in place and the rush to get ashore 
begins. There is no cause for hurry, because the baggage 
has to be taken off and examined before people can leave 
the pier; but that does not give anyone pause. To see 
the scrambling mass moving along the gang-planks one 
might think the ship afire, and everyone anxious to quit 
it in the shortest possible time. Off they surge, bonnets 
and bags and umbrellas, new clothes, top hats, and alpen- 
stocks, dogs, maids, and stewards, each one pushing and 
hustling his neighbor, but good-natured about it, smiling, 
laughing, all of them delighted to get ashore. 




Vl. 7. — Docks and Slips 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 35 

In half an hour the whole ship's company is within 
the pier-shed getting bags and boxes together for the 
customs examination. Everybody is moving, gesticulat- 
ing, calling, perspiring. Passengers and their friends, 
with stewards, telegraph boys, customs officers, policemen, 
expressmen, are swirling about like so much flotsam. 
It looks like a mad mob, but there is a method in the mad- 
ness. The moment one's boxes are together a special 
officer can be obtained to examine them. A landing card 
is presented at the desk of the chief and he immediately 
details a subordinate to accompany you. None of them 
takes off a cap. Your officer may nod a ''Good morning ! " 
but it is very perfunctory. He wants to know at once 
where your baggage is, and if it is all together in one 
place. Then the trouble begins. 

That is, trouble may begin if one tries to dodge ques- 
tions or hide anything, or even has a suspicious look. If 
one knows no guile he need fear no evil. For the average 
customs officer has no malice prepense. He is anxious to 
get through with the examination and get you and your 
bags off the premises ; but he has heard somewhat about 
the path of duty being the path of glory ; and, besides — 
a plain-clothes inspector may be watching him. At any 
rate, it will be necessary to open up those "few presents" 
and show the bottom of things. Perhaps when he has 
finished there is nothing but bottom left and most of your 
apparel is scattered about on the dock; and then again 



36 THE NEW NEW YORK 

it is possible that you will be passed on as pleasantly, with 
withers imwrung, as though in England or in France. 

But the ordeal is through with and help is at hand. 
Ununiformed, unlicensed, unnumbered porters offer to 
aid in restoring the lost equilibrium. The belongings are 
put back, squeezed in, trampled into place, and the bags 
locked and strapped. Then the porter trundles them 
down toward the street entrance of the long dock and, 
incidentally, stops in the vicinity of carriage agents and 
cabmen. A bargain is struck for a conveyance. The 
price is of an exalted sky-scraping nature, but it is not 
the proper time to quarrel with cabmen. They know it, 
and charge according to their knowledge. Neither is it 
the place to get the best cab accommodations. The 
horses are street-car derelicts, the harness gives evi- 
dence of disintegration, the carriage and the shabby 
unshaven driver are usually the worse for wear. 

One resolves not to be bothered by such small matters. 
The frayed lining of a coach is not to influence your opin- 
ion about your native town. A look out of the carriage 
window (or over it, for there is no glass left in it) is pleas- 
anter and more philosophical. Alas ! the view without 
is quite as bad as the look within. West Street is crowded 
with trucks, drays, carts, cabs, cars, trolleys that tangle 
into knots and bunches and then somehow untangle ; the 
pavement is broken by car tracks and an occasional hole 
into which wheels drop with a thud and come out with a 




I'l.. N Ni;\\ ^■()l^K C'rsruM lloi.^i; 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 37 

jerk; the dingy, battered-looking buildings that line the 
east side of the street, the cheap and gaudy signs, the 
barrel skids across the sidewalks, the lampless lamp posts, 
the garbage cans, the stained awnings, are all somewhat 
disturbing. And the roar and rattle and clang that seem 
to accompany the movements of that mob of humanity ! 
Was there ever such a din known to men, since the walls 
of Jericho fell down ? 

Once out of the West Street maelstrom the carriage, 
perhaps, slips into a long, narrow side street, made up of 
many four-story buildings, all quite alike, and all appar- 
ently inhabited by people who rub unclean hands on 
doors, walls, and shutters, and do not bother about 
washing either the windows or themselves. Dull-looking 
women sit on the low stoops and survey the street in which 
dirty children are playing, often in connection with stand- 
ing drays or ash barrels or coal heaps. As for the street 
itself, it is perhaps a series of Belgian block bumps, with 
an occasional break-away into asphalt. Wherever it 
crosses another street or avenue there are double car 
tracks with the clanging gongs of surface cars, and 
perhaps overhead the rattle and roar of a rusty-looking 
elevated railway. 

There is no cessation of clatter, and apparently no end 
to the mean buildings that line the way. Tenements, fac- 
tories, shops, saloons, — whatever they are or are not, — 
atleast just here they hold the record for uniform rectan- 



38 THE NEW NEW YORK 

gular meanness. It is a little shocking the way all this 
is driven in upon one after some months in Paris or 
London. Perhaps you have ignored it, if not denied it, 
many a time in speaking of New York over there in Europe ; 
and, true enough, there is some improvement over earlier 
days ; but who could imagine it was still so bad ! Yet this 
is the West Side of the city; the East Side is perhaps 
worse. You begin to wonder about the narrow strip of 
comparative decency running up Fifth Avenue, Madison 
Avenue, and Broadway. Perhaps in your absence even 
that has become submerged beneath the high waves of 
immigration. 

Gradually the buildings grow larger and more important, 
the streets cleaner and more filled with people, the vehi- 
cles more numerous, the noise more insistent. Apart- 
ment houses begin to rise, shops and stores develop 
imposing show-windows, cars are coming and going, 
crowds are circulating in strings and knots. Presently 
the carriage rattles into Broadway and the shabby but 
unabashed driver begins edging his way across it, with 
one eye on the autocratic policeman who stands in the 
center of the street and regulates traffic. Through and 
across that net-work of cars and people the route lies 
down a clean asphalt street to Fifth Avenue, and in a 
few moments your dilapidated trap brings up with a 
flourish of whip, in front of perhaps the most ornate hotel 
in the world. 



THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA 39 

Carriages in plush and velvet, ladies in silks and satins, 
flunkies and footmen in lacings and facings, pages in 
gloves and buttons, blend in a gorgeous confusion about 
the entrances. Within there are glimpses of marble and 
gilding. Oriental rugs and portieres, visitors in gay hats 
and marvelous costumes, smartly dressed men, hurrying 
porters, telegraph boys, call boys. An air of luxury and 
wealth, not to say riotous extravagance, seems to exude 
from every opening in the building. Around it are 
colossal structures in stone and marble, along the avenue 
is a great moving throng in carriages and on foot, close 
at hand gorgeous shop-windows catch the eye, in the 
distance towering Flatirons lose themselves in pale out- 
lines, over all there is an unceasing roar and honk and 
whistle, and far above is the serene blue of the American sky. 

There is nothing strikingly new about this. The New 
Yorker has known it, known the squalor and known the 
magnificence, for a long time ; and yet each year as he re- 
turns from Europe the sharp contrast is brought home to 
him more violently. In a few days he will accept it, 
without further thinking, as he has done many times 
before ; but he knows, nevertheless, that it is there. And 
how there, why there, in this chief city of the great repub- 
lic ? Is democracy merely a name ? And is this newly 
established aristocracy of wealth more dominant, more 
arrogant, more despotic, than the old aristocracy of birth 
and rank? 



40 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Fortunately, those questions do not have to be answered 
immediately. The stranger in New York is at first more 
given to the exclamation than the interrogation, and as 
for the returned native he is perhaps momentarily dazed 
by the splendor and the meanness of his own town. 
Besides, concise and final answers are not to be accepted 
regarding places and people in America. Many problems 
are still in process of solution. Not even the Americans 
themselves know precisely how they will come out. 



SEASONAL IMPKESSIONS 



Pl. III. -WASHINGTON SQUARE 



3 ?l A' JOP. 1- lornn 1 h: ; A vv 



CHAPTER III 

SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 

What is so gay as a day in New York, especially if it 
be in October ! The city is perhaps seen at its best dur- 
ing that month. The inhabitants, returned from their 
summer vacations, have a brightness and an alertness 
about them, they step along the streets energetically as 
though in good health and spirits, and they pass the time 
of day with cordiality, even vivacity. Business enter- 
prises of the winter have started (or at least one thinks 
they have though they are going on always) ; summer 
changes have perhaps been made ; there is apparently a 
newness and a smartness about the streets and shops and 
moving wheels. 

Above all it is the season of light which may possibly 
account for some of the smart look of things. The skies 
are clear, the air is warm, and the sunlight falls perhaps 
for many days without clouds or rain. It is just ordinary 
Atlantic Coast sunshine, and dull enough compared with 
that of the table-lands of Wyoming or the deserts of Ari- 
zona or the sierras of Old Mexico ; but by contrast with 
London light — London where the sun seen through smoke 

43 



44 THE NEW NEW YORK 

so often looks like a hot copper cent — it is really quite 
wonderful. New Yorkers have a way of boasting about it 
as though it were something of their own manufacture 
(which suggests the inclusive mind) ; but, nevertheless, 
it should be put down to their credit that they have tried to 
preserve it by prohibiting the use of soft coal within the 
city limits. 

Perhaps as a result of the soft-coal prohibition New 
York is a clean city. Not always clean underfoot. In 
a democratic city where the streets belong to everyone 
to use and to no one to keep clean, where men traffic and 
team and are always in a hurry, it is impossible to prevent 
accumulations of litter. During the summer months it 
takes no herculean effort to keep the streets decently 
swept; but in winter, with much ice and snow, and a 
limited and unreliable labor supply, the difficulty is 
greatly increased. London or Paris perhaps does that 
sort of thing better than New York, because it has better 
facilities for doing it ; but, nevertheless, New York is, all 
told, the cleaner city. Paris is gray with dust and London 
grimy with soot, but the buildings of New York are as 
bright almost as the day they were erected. Look up at 
the clean walls, windows, and cornices ! How newly 
washed seem the chimneys, towers, and domes ! The 
roofs, when you see them from the upper story of some 
sky-scraper, have a scrubbed look about them ; and even 
the trees in the larger parks, for all that pipes are harrying 



-ft^na^ ^^ .=.,...^^^.,^^.,,.^ 




]'i>. 9. — The I'latiko.n (Kui.lkk IUtilding) 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 45 

their roots and gases their branches, have a brightness 
quite unknown to the somber growths of Hyde Park or 
the Champs Elysees. 

And how the color does crop out at every turn — is 
brought out perhaps with some extra sharpness because 
of the clear light ! Everything shows color. And seldom 
do you find the same tone repeated. The buildings along- 
side of which run the elevated roads from the Battery 
to the Harlem River, are often alike in structure but 
seldom in hue. They differ each from the other by a tone 
or a shade. Stone, brick, cement, terra-cotta — no one 
could name or count the hundreds or even thousands of 
different tints or shades they show. To the unobservant 
the high mass of the Flatiron, the spires of St. Patrick's 
Cathedral, and Diana's Tower of the Madison Square 
Garden are alike in hues; but neither in local color 
nor in texture are they the same. When the straight 
shafts of sunset are striking them and the light upon 
them is reflected, the hues may be in one saffron, in 
another pink, in the third salmon-colored. Just so the 
morning sun falling upon the tall towers of the Brooklyn 
Bridge leaves a different stain from that upon the turrets 
of the Park Row Building or the great glass walls of the 
Singer Tower. 

Everywhere one goes, up or down the city, this prodi- 
gality of color shows. Sometimes it appears in large 
patches like the red mass of the Produce Exchange, the 



46 THE NEW NEW YORK 

gray mass of the sky-scrapers at Fifty-Fifth Street and 
Fifth Avenue, or the green mass of the Central Park; 
but more often the coloring is in spots here and there, 
and counts only as variation in the prevailing note. 
For there is a prevailing note, a blend in this riot of hues. 
It requires distance, however, to see it. Close to view 
many of the colors in houses, signs, vehicles, costumes, 
fly at you rabidly, and are perhaps so intense that you 
turn away with dazed eyes only to see the complementary 
color in the very next object. Under the bright October 
sun every hue jumps to its highest pitch and apparently 
every shadow sinks to its lowest depth. The effect is 
violent. 

But October with its bright light and high color has 
also its lilac or purple haze that blends all colors into 
one tone and makes of many pieces a pictorial unity. The 
haze does not belong exclusively to the woodlands, though 
in the Central Park it lurks along the driveways, rests 
upon the Mall, and floods in and out among the trees 
and rocks and flowers; while beyond Riverside Drive it 
hangs above the Hudson, shrouding and yet revealing 
the distant Palisades. It is also to be seen almost any 
day as one stands at the top of Murray Hill and looks 
down Fifth Avenue toward Madison Square. It fills the 
whole lower avenue, surrounds the towers and steeples 
and cornices, and draws its mauve-hued veiling across 
the sharp prow of the distant Flatiron, making of that 




Pl. 10. — New York ix Raix (Park Avknue) 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 47 

much maligned structure a thing of beauty. It is not 
different in the streets of the lower city. Neither here 
nor there does the dust of traffic rising from the streets 
obliterate or obscure it. On the contrary, the more dust 
and automobile smoke, the heavier is the atmosphere, 
and the more perfect the ensemble. 

New York is seldom free from a haze or mist of some 
sort. But it is a very thin veiling compared with that 
produced by the moisture and smoke of London. So 
it is that the Londoner within our gates is almost con- 
tinuously out of focus. He complains of 'Moud" colors, 
wonders at the absence of aerial perspective, and thinks 
it all signifies and symbolizes our crude civilization ; 
whereas, it may merely suggest that he himself has not 
yet acquired a comprehensive point of view. He is per- 
haps looking at objects and colors in detail rather than 
in their relationship. Seen as one should look at a 
Monet landscape, for instance, the city is a marvel of 
color and light. That is its distinct and positive beauty. 
Of course, it is somewhat shocking to keep reiterating 
this, since we have all been reared in the belief that 
civic beauty lies in classic buildings, in roof lines, in 
squares, ovals, statuary, and the like; yet the hereti- 
cal still insist that beauty may be in such intangible 
evanescent features as color, light, and air, with arches, 
columns, and towers little more than the catch points of 
perspective — the objects upon which light and color play. 



48 THE NEW NEW YORK 

This lilac or purple haze of October may run through 
November and December, with day following day of 
sunshine, and the winter come late to the city. It is 
not an unusual experience. Yet as January comes in, 
the nights and days are decidedly colder and the autumn 
haze has perhaps shifted into a pale blue. The air seems 
thinner, sharper, more eager; and the tops of the tall 
buildings lift out of the dust of the street into clearer 
and brighter regions. All the roof and tower and cupola 
gew-gaws seem to sparkle in the sun, the drifts of steam 
from the hotels and high apartment houses are dazzling 
white, down in the street people in heavy coats hurry by, 
and cabbies and flunkies in bear-skins sit on their boxes 
looking preternaturally red in the face. 

At times it can be very cold in the city with its touch 
of the salt sea in the air — far colder than in the country, 
notwithstanding the popular belief to the contrary. 
The steel buildings, the blocks and blocks of stone, 
brick, and cement, the flagstone sidewalks, are receivers 
and retainers of cold rather than of heat. In the forest 
in winter a wood road will be warmer than the open, 
but in the city a steel-and-stone street, swept by the wind, 
may be colder than the wind itself. And how the wind 
can blow through the city streets ! The tall buildings 
seem to catch it on their upper walls and spill it like a 
sail down into the thoroughfares, where it moves in 
violent twists and spirals. The foot-passengers in the 




Pi.. 11. I'oKT 1a:k in ?I.\ze 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 49 

neighborhood of the Flatiron sometimes have unpleasant 
experiences with it ; and farther up-town, though Society 
on the inside of a brougham goes through the Plaza to 
the Park with unruffled feathers, yet the man on the box 
has to ''hold fast." It is the same story in the lower 
city. People worry along the streets with their heads 
down, holding their hats with a firm grip ; the peddlers 
and newsboys creep into the great doorways and stamp 
their feet ; and the big truck horses go by with steaming 
breath and waving manes. 

In freezing weather there can be no water used on the 
streets, and the dust accompaniment to the high wind 
can be readily imagined. It sometimes blows in small 
clouds to the infinite disgust of everyone. There is 
nothing to do about it except to get indoors and watch, 
through the windows, the pavement swept smooth in 
spots and heaped with eddies of dust in other places. 
Fortunately such days are few. They are not pleasant — 
no, not even in New York — though there may be some 
consolation in thinking that they occur in other cities 
(Vienna and Rome, for instance) quite as often as here. 
It is even charged that Chicago, with its appellation 
of ''the Windy City," goes beyond New York in this 
respect — something which every New Yorker is too 
modest to deny. 

Inevitably comes the snow ; and that in a city is always 
regarded as something of a misfortune. Up in the 



50 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Central Park and along Riverside Drive it looks very- 
beautiful. The children, the skaters, and the coasters, 
with those who have horses and sleighs, enjoy it, and 
people who have offices up aloft in the sky-scrapers and 
see it flying past the windows in great gusts and clouds 
are sometimes elated by it ; but down in the street where 
it falls and lodges it is neither inspiring nor welcome. 
It mingles with the dust, is churned dirty by hoofs and 
wheels, and, if it melts, soon makes a slush underfoot. 
The surface cars with their electric brooms push it 
into the gutters, the ''white wings" of the street-cleaning 
department heap it into huge mounds for carriages and 
trucks to wallow through and break down again, and 
carts work at it for days and weeks trying to get it away 
to the docks and so into the rivers. A week after a heavy 
snow-fall a dozen or more of the principal streets may 
be clear, but the side streets have barricades of snow 
along their curb lines perhaps for a month or more. 
Nothing but a warm rain and a spring sun clears up the 
thoroughfares effectively. In the meantime, through 
January and February and into March, with the alterna- 
tions of temperature, the snow melts and freezes, making 
the cross-walks and streets disagreeable and occasionally 
quite impossible. 

And rain ! It does not rain every day or every week 
by any means, but when the wind comes out of the east, 
the storm clouds are almost always following close upon 



M 




O 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 51 

it^ heels. Then the signs and weather-vanes and windows 
of the city creak and rattle in the wind, and the pipes 
and gutters gurgle with the rain. If it follow cold 
weather perhaps the rain freezes as it falls, coating with 
ice the pavements and stoops of the houses, the high sides 
of the sky-scrapers, the tall masts of the shipping in the 
rivers. The huge suspension bridges turn into fairy 
creations of spun glass, the trees in the parks glitter like 
old-fashioned chandeliers ; while down in the streets horses 
slip and motors slide and the pedestrian has difficulty 
in keeping his feet. As the rain continues the ice gradu- 
ally melts, the trolley wheels buzz and sputter electricity, 
the elevated roads spit long sparks of blue light from the 
third rail, the carriages go by with a splash, and the rub- 
ber-shod, rubber-coated cab horse slowly pounds out a 
hollow clop-clop, clop-clop, clop-clop. 

Perhaps a night and a day and a night the rain falls 
in waving sheets that slash against the high windows 
of the office buildings, and break into water-dust against 
turret and tower. The streets are flooded, the tide- 
water, driven in by the wind, is up to its highest pitch, 
the cellars along West Street are drowned out, and every 
pipe is working overtime in getting rid of the flood. 
Gradually all the dirty snow of many weeks' accumula- 
tion seems to slip from the turtle back of the island and 
slide toward one or the other of the rivers. The city is 
washed clean. Before morning the wind shifts into the 



52 THE NEW NEW YORK 

south, the clouds break; and when the sun comes up 
perhaps New York awakes to find that spring has arrived 
overnight. 

Spring apparently comes earlier to the city than to 
the country. The small parks shut in by high build- 
ings, and thus protected in measure from the winds, 
respond quickly to the first warm sun. Even in the 
Central Park the grass shows green in the little swales 
a week before it starts into life up in Westchester, and the 
stems of the maple put on a ruddy glow some days sooner 
than over in New Jersey. Around the southern slopes 
of the rocks the crocuses and dandelions push up, and in 
the lowlands pussy willows begin to burst with impa- 
tience. Nature turns uneasily in her sleep in the early 
days of March for all that there may be some patches 
of snow still lying in the hollows. The bluebirds and 
song sparrows come back by ones and twos and threes, 
and the blackbirds and robins in flocks, to add to the 
sense of stirring life. New York itself seems to emerge 
as from a bath with a cleaner and fresher aspect. 

The cold blue haze of winter is now seldom seen. In 
its place there is a warm, silver-gray atmosphere that 
is more apparent, more of an envelope, more of a har- 
monizer of local hues. It seems to come out of the moist 
ground, out of the rivers, out of the harbors, and is 
possibly the residuum of spring mists and dews. The 
days of March and April are not wanting in sunshine. 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 53 

yet they also bring gray clouds and falling rain. The 
rain is welcomed in the parks, along the driveways, and 
in the less cleanly portions of the city. And it is inter- 
esting to watch as it falls into the streets, or is seen in 
bright diagonal lines against the tall buildings, or splashes 
into the rivers and makes a bubbling surface, or hangs 
like a fringed mantle over the Palisades, over Brooklyn 
Heights, over the hills of Staten Island. How very 
beautiful the high ridge of sky-scrapers looks shrouded 
in that silver-gray mist, their tops half-disappearing in 
the upper blend of rain and clouds, and around their 
bases the docks and shipping half-emerging from the 
lower mists ! What wonderful patterns, what mysterious 
appearances, these high buildings take upon themselves 
with their masses of light and dark floating in the heavy 
atmosphere of rain ! 

When the sky clears, the blue seems more intense than 
ever, the white clouds are dazzling in light and perhaps 
heaped into enormous mounds of cumulus; and the 
sunlight falls clear and bright on the white walls of the 
Metropolitan Tower, and upon Diana of the Bended Bow 
above the Madison Square Garden. The long wet streets 
steam in the sun, the soaked trees in the parks steam, 
even the wet cab horses, as they jog by, steam too. 
Gradually the city dries out, returning to its normal 
condition ; but the Flatiron, which acts as a barometer 
for the people passing on upper Fifth Avenue, indicates 



54 THE NEW NEW YORK 

that there is still considerable humidity in the air. A 
gray mist surrounds it. The time has come for jonquils 
and tulips in Union Square, and spring in New York 
is not very different from spring elsewhere. 

Gradually, and quite imperceptibly, the season slips on. 
The cumulus clouds heap higher and higher along the 
southern horizon, the grass turns a summer green down 
at the Battery, the trees break into full leaf up in the 
parks. The flower shops along the avenues are over- 
flowing upon the sidewalks with bursting beauty; the 
East Side fire-escapes in spots are green and white and 
yellow with plants growing in cans; and up toward the 
Bronx and Pelham Bay, over in the borough of Queens, 
down on the hills of Staten Island, the wild flowers grow in 
the fields and woods, just as they did in the days when Peter 
Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians 
for sixty guilders, payable in goods of Dutch manufacture. 

And so the summer comes in — is ushered in usually 
about the middle of June by three or four days of heat. 
If accompanied by moisture in the air, its results are 
somewhat disturbing. The newspapers print lists of the 
heat prostrations, and the reporters delight in picturing 
the horrors of the hot wave with that wealth of adjec- 
tive and height of caption peculiar to modern journalism. 
But the dangers are somewhat exaggerated. Those 
who use ordinary precautions are in no peril. As for 
the quality of the heat, it is not different from that which 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 55 

occasionally visits Paris or Berlin or Vienna. Still, it 
is not to be denied that in New York men and horses 
do drop here and there when the mercury mounts very 
high ; and those who do not drop are not having the most 
enjoyable time of their lives. Hot weather in New York 
is not more defensible than elsewhere, and those who can 
•do so generally leave the city behind them in the summer 
season. 

But if the city is not so pleasant in July as in November, 
it is often more beautiful. Heat brings out color in its 
richest tints. The blue and the gray hazes disappear, 
and now the distant Flatiron, seen down Fifth Avenue, 
seems to float in a rosy atmosphere. During the long 
summer afternoons the high sky above it shows a pallid 
blue suffused with pink. Warm colors are in the clouds, 
and are reflected from the white buildings, the tall towers, 
the harbor waters, even from the roadways and drive- 
ways along the rivers. 

It is on such summer evenings as these, when the 
western sky is flushed with hot hues, that the spires of 
St. Patrick's Cathedral, seen from Sixth Avenue, take 
on pink and red and yellow tones; and the high tower 
of the Times Building runs from a red glow at sunset 
through pink, mauve, and lilac, until, with twilight gone, 
it settles into a blue that belongs exclusively to the 
summer night. These are the evenings, too, for the sky- 
scrapers of the lower town to light up with strange hues 



56 THE NEW NEW YORK 

along their peaks, and reflect fiery lights from their 
countless windows. The sun is a wonderful alchemist, 
and it works as busily and as potently on the face wall 
of a sky-scraper as on the canyon walls of the Colorado 
or the snow caps of Monte Rosa. 

Unfortunately, the hurrying New Yorker is not in a 
mood to enjoy these summer color-changes. He is dis- 
turbed in his comfort, he fumes and frets ; and as a result, 
he exaggerates both the heat and his own condition. 
He is not '^ roasted" or "melted," as he writes the family. 
In reality he often has a cooler and pleasanter summer 
in town than the family sojourning in a box of a hotel 
in the mountains or by the sea-shore. His house is 
usually large and airy, his office is high up in the region 
of the winds, and he has a thick-walled club where he 
seeks refuge in the evenings. With the huddled and 
packed crowds on the East Side it is somewhat different. 
They never go away, never get a vacation of any kind, 
except for a day on a recreation pier or on an excursion 
steamer down the bay ; they have neither cool houses 
nor breezy offices. During the hot weather they live 
in the street, sleep on the roofs, and endure the heat 
in silence. They suffer without doubt, and yet their 
miseries cannot be put down solely to the climate. Peo- 
ple when "cabined, cribbed, confined," cannot be very 
happy or comfortable though the bending skies above be 
those of Olympus. 



SEASONAL IMPRESSIONS 57 

Aside from the very rich and the very poor there are 
the many thousands of neither high nor low degree, who 
endure the dog-days in the city, in shop and factory and 
office, perspiring and grumbling perhaps, but neither 
fainting nor faltering. By day they move along the 
shady side of the street, and by night they haunt some 
roof-garden or open-air vaudeville ; or perhaps sit quietly 
on park benches watching the water play in the foun- 
tains, or the gentle swaying of the tree branches in the 
warm air, or the dark purple shadows of the foliage cast 
on the pavements by the electric lights. 

The various conditions of humanity, each in its own 
way, manage to live through the seasons as they 
come and go. Of course New York has its many short- 
comings and does not lack for the knowledge thereof. 
It is charged with this, and indicted for that, and con- 
demned for the other thing. But its climate is neither a 
failure nor a crime. It is merely a series of contrasts, 
like so many other things that one meets with in and 
about the city. 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 



Pl. IV. — the plaza 



ASAJH 3HT - .VI .jT 




m^ 





CHAPTER IV 

THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 

If those who originally planned the streets of New 
York had possessed enough imagination to foresee the 
down-town habit of the present day, no doubt they would 
have arranged matters differently. They fancied that 
the city would be a great shipping center, a seaport; 
and that people would need many streets running to- 
ward the water on either side. Moreover, the long 
backbone of Manhattan, being high ground from which 
there was a general slope away toward the rivers, must 
have suggested that the natural drainage and sewerage 
of the city would be along the many ribs or streets run- 
ning east and west. No one thought then that in a com- 
paratively few years half the population would, morning 
and evening, be moving along the ridge of the island, 
crowding, clutching, struggling with one another, like 
so many ants traveling along the narrow top of a fence 
rail. 

A glance at the map will show the peculiar disposition 
of the land. And it will also show hundreds of streets 
running east and west from river to river; but, at its 

61 



62 THE NEW NEW YORK 

widest part (Fourteenth Street), only seventeen avenues 
running north and south, and the majority of these not 
available for through traffic. The map, when taken in 
connection with the accepted idea of most New Yorkers 
that business must be transacted within a stone's throw 
of Wall Street and living must be carried on in the 
neighborhood of the Central Park, will explain, readily 
enough, why there is so much friction during the "rush" 
hours. Hundreds of thousands of human ants want 
to pass along the fence rail at the same time. The wonder 
is, not that some of them get hustled and pushed, and 
that many lose the polish of their boots and the sheen 
of their hats; but that more are not injured or killed 
outright. The transportation of a million or more people 
a day from one point to another along the high ridge of 
crowded Manhattan is no easy task. They say in London 
or Paris or Berlin, with a little air of superior experience, 
that they do things differently over there. True enough, 
but the chances are they could not do this kind of thing 
at all. 

The movement of these large bodies of people along 
the ridge begins early in the morning. From seven until 
ten o'clock one may notice the drift of people in the side 
streets toward the main thoroughfares. Men hurry 
along for a block or so and then disappear down a sub- 
way entrance, or up the steps of an elevated station, 
or they turn down an avenue to wait for a surface car. 



■; ■rf!"*.^ 



^i ^ il 



f 







ff ^':f 



' 1 I i!^* i 
'1 







Pl. 13. — Broadway, Down Town 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 63 

The surface lines along Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh 
Avenues are always crowded with passengers from Harlem 
down as far as Union Square; but they are not usually 
taken by people who are moving toward the lower part of 
the city. They are not fast enough and are subject to 
being held up at every street crossing. The crowd in them 
is ''getting to business" in the up-town stores and offices, 
or else is coming down from the region of the park to 
shop or travel or keep some form of engagement. 

It is a good-natured, long-suffering crowd, and submits 
to being packed, like cattle in a box car, without a mur- 
mur. Long after the seating and standing capacity 
of a car is exhausted, the conductor keeps stopping for 
''just a few more." No one complains. Everyone has 
been one of the stopped-for, and knows what it means 
to be left standing on a street corner, perhaps in the rain. 
Finally the car is filled to the bursting point, and when 
a quick stop or a sudden start is made, the mass within, 
holding on by straps, rolls and sways like a lump of jelly. 
As for the crowds that choke the platforms without, 
they roll too, but regain their equilibrium by force of 
sheer bulk and iron railings. 

The conductor wriggles in and out among the masses, 
collecting fares, disarranging toilets, and elbowing people 
right and left ; but no one says anything in remonstrance. 
It is not that people fail to realize the absurd and the 
disagreeable in all this, but because they recognize the 



64 THE NEW NEW YORK 

unavoidable. What use to quarrel about what cannot 
be helped ? They have to be at their posts at a certain 
hour, and there is no other way to get there. The service 
is inadequate, to be sure, but how can it be bettered? 
It changes completely every few years in the endeavor 
to accommodate itself to the increased demand ; but the 
crowd keeps growing faster than human wit can devise 
larger and better means of transportation. The foreign 
visitor who stands agape at this packing of cars has not 
the smallest idea of the problem presented. It is not 
the moving of a few thousand people at leisure, but the 
carrying each day of nearly two million passengers in the 
borough of Manhattan alone, and the bulk of them during 
the ''rush" hours at morning and evening. The squeezed 
and jammed and jellied public knows something about 
this, and, sensibly enough, agrees to accept the inevitable. 
The volume of this up-town crowd of buyers, travelers, 
clerks, managers, typewriters, and shop girls that fill 
the surface cars in the early morning is by no means 
insignificant. It is really enormous, almost as great as 
the crowd that gathers in the neighborhood of Wall 
Street. For it is an exaggeration to say that all busi- 
ness is done down town. There are many large banks, 
insurance companies, printing-offices and wholesale houses, 
to say nothing of the retail shops, in the upper city. 
Then too, most of the railroading, manufacturing, and 
shipping is carried on along the upper east and west sides. 




Vl. 14. — Broad Street 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 65 

And though all the surface cars in the morning going 
down town are filled to overflowing, the returning cars 
are not entirely empty. There are stray currents of 
humanity that help restore the lost balance — people 
who for one reason or another move in an opposite direc- 
tion to the main streams. Harlem and beyond are not 
deserted when the Stock Exchange opens. Some busi- 
ness, some traffic is going on all over the city, at all times. 
However, the main currents in the early morning set 
toward Wall Street and they find the lines of most 
resistance but of least time by way of the elevated roads 
and the subways. The crush on these through lines is 
similar to that on the surface cars. Train after train 
hums and rattles its way into the station to find a long 
wall of humanity lined up on the platform ready to board 
it. There is a clank of gates or the slam of an iron door, 
a few apologetic-looking people respond to the guard's 
call of ''Passengers off first"; then there is an ''All 
aboard," followed by a steady stream of people pouring 
in at each end of each car. The gates slam shut, the 
signal cord is jerked violently, the train with its electric 
power responds with another jerk, and is quickly under 
way. After half a dozen stops the train is filled, and if 
it is an express it runs through to The Bridge or Rector 
Street or South Ferry ; if it is a local, it continues adding 
passengers, until the aisles and platforms are crowded, 
and people are hanging by straps as in the surface cars. 



66 THE NEW NEW YORK 

It is the same good-natured, tolerant crowd, whether 
met with on the surface and elevated roads, or in the 
subways. It stands jostling, pushing, elbowing with 
the utmost composure, each one knowing very well that 
he himself cannot get in or get out without doing the 
same thing. It even tries to be indifferent, looks out of 
the window or, more often, hides its face in the morning 
paper, if the crush is not too violent for the use of its 
hands. But the morning paper is not taken very seriously. 
The head-lines are read, and by the time Franklin Street 
and Park Place are reached many a journal has found 
its way to the floor, and is left there by its owner. The 
passengers now begin to file off. At Courtlandt and 
Rector half the occupants have disembarked to the 
refrain of "Step lively, please"; and when the Battery 
and South Ferry are called there are few to respond. 
The guards make a frantic effort to gather up the stray 
papers, the ventilators are reversed with a slam, and 
presently the train is going north at high speed for an- 
other load of passengers. 

The disembarked hastens downstairs to the street or 
scrambles upstairs out of the subway, as the case may be, 
and there it meets and mingles with the larger moving 
throng of the lower city. Whence came this greater 
throng ? How did it arrive here ? What was its method 
of transit? To answer such questions one has only to 
remember that the island of Manhattan does not begin 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 67 

to furnish houses and homes for all the people that do 
business in the city. There is a great host living on the 
outskirts, in the suburbs, within a radius of thirty miles 
of the City Hall, that comes and goes each day with more 
regularity than the tides in the harbor. This does not 
mean merely the contingent living to the north of the city 
in Westchester, or along the sound in Connecticut, though 
the representation from there is vast enough in propor- 
tions to fill the trains from Forty-Second Street down to 
the lower city. The streams of humanity flowing from 
that water-shed are very large and yet apparently they 
dwindle into insignificance compared with what pours 
in from Long Island. 

Up through Brooklyn and along the great bridges there 
is continuous travel by trolley, motor, and foot, from early 
in the morning. Before nine o'clock the tide is at its 
flood. Around the New York exit of the Brooklyn Bridge 
the currents from many directions meet and mingle to 
make a veritable whirlpool of humanity that circles and 
eddies, foams and dashes, gets mixed up in a roaring swirl, 
then collapses in froth, dissipates, and finally trickles away 
in small streams to various points of the compass. Of 
course there is a blocking of traffic, and occasionally an 
accident, due to the rush off or on the cars, that pro- 
duces confusion, excitement, loud protest, or angry 
denunciation. But this, 'though a not unusual occur- 
rence, always leaves the pushed and hustled crowd more 



68 THE NEW NEW YORK 

or less indifferent. Everyone knows that the thorough- 
fares are insufficient during ''rush" hours; but they do 
not know how matters can be helped/ 

There is less of a crowd at the Williamsburgh Bridge 
because it is not the most direct route to the lower 
part of the city. It is one of the ways by which those 
who do business in the middle Broadway region travel, 
and it contributes its sum to the mass that each morning 
moves into the city ; but it lends not directly to the con- 
gestion of the lower town. Still, though it is not a direct 
way, it adds something, like the ferries beneath it that 
keep coming and going from shore to shore. Time was 
when the ferries at South and Wall and Fulton streets 
were the only means of getting into the lower town from 
Brooklyn, and they were then, in the morning hours, often 
loaded with people to the gunwales ; but since the building 
of the new bridges and the opening of the Battery tube, 
they have been used but little. Eventually their occupa- 
tion will be gone completely. 

Thousands upon thousands swarm into the city from 
Long Island. Bridges creak and ferries strain and tunnels 
roar with the weight of them ; and the rasp and shuffle of 
their feet along the decks, along the bridge approaches, 
and along the flagged streets help make that deep under- 

' The crush at the Brooklyn Bridge has been greatly reduced since the 
opening of the Battery tube in 1908. This has, for the time, diverted 
much of the South Brooklyn travel. 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 69 

tone of the city to which the electric cars add the high note. 
Yet Brooklyn and beyond is only one source of intake. 
The shores of the Upper Bay, Staten Island, Coney Island, 
send up their quota by steamer and ferry-boat ; while from 
the Hudson, reaching far into the state, steamboats 
and railways are bringing down and disembarking more 
thousands to swell the throng. But the body of com- 
muters that comes in from New Jersey is, perhaps, the 
greatest of them all. 

Probably four hundred thousand people is a moderate 
estimate for those who daily travel into New York from 
across the Hudson. It is nearer, no doubt, to half a 
million. The local trains on all the railways through 
New Jersey are crowded from seven to ten in the morn- 
ing, and the double-decked ferries that push and snort 
and whistle their various ways from shore to shore look 
black with massed humanity. Again, as on the East 
River side, there are long tunnels under the Hudson, 
carrying passengers in swift electric cars ; and these are 
lessening the crush on the ferries for the time being, but 
it will not be long before both tunnels and ferries are 
once more inadequate. The population in New Jersey 
that comes and goes daily to New York is increasing by 
thousands each year, and the greater the ease in getting 
to town, the better the traveling facilities, the more 
people there are willing enough to live in the country in 
preference to the crowded quarters of the upper city. 



70 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The traffic over and under the Hudson is already enormous, 
and what it will become a few years hence no one can even 
imagine. 

One meets with the same throng crossing the Hudson 
River that he finds in the subways and the elevated 
trains. It is not over-polite. There are men who get 
up invariably to give their seats to women, and others 
who always apologize for crowding or jostling a neighbor; 
but there are many who do neither the one thing nor the 
other. It is not so much want of manners as thoughtless- 
ness. They are not thinking about their neighbors. They 
have their minds fixed on the day's work and are quite 
unconscious of anything in their surroundings, except 
the time that is being made. They stand or herd to- 
gether on decks and platforms, like bands of sheep in a 
corral, waiting silently until the boat or train is in, the 
gates are opened, and they can hustle up the runways and 
get into the street. Delay is about the only thing that 
frets them, and to miss a boat or a train is usually con- 
sidered legitimate excuse for profanity. 

Danger and disaster frequently follow upon this high- 
pressure speed, this unending hurry; but the average 
commuter by boat or. by tunnel will not allow himself to 
contemplate the idea of anything happening to him. He 
dodges like a mackerel in a school attacked by blue-fish, 
and thinks it will not be his turn just yet. The train comes 
to a stop in the subway or on the elevated and instantly a 




Pl. 15. — Ann Stkket 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 71 

hundred windows go up and a hundred heads are thrust 
out, each one anxious to know what the delay is about. 
The block system may run up danger signals by the 
score, but the impatient mob within wants to know ''why 
he (the engineer) doesn't go ahead." 

It is just so on the rivers. Fogs shut down and shut out 
everything a boat's length away, the bells are ringing and 
the whistles blowing ; but the mob on the decks, straining 
its eyes into the gray pall ahead, occasionally casts a 
glance toward the pilot-house and wonders why the boat 
is running under a slow bell. Every few minutes, even 
in fair weather, there is some craft crossing your bows or 
whistling shrilly that it intends to cross, and for you to 
''slack up." When your pilot whistles back that he 
rejects the proposal, that he will not "slack up," and the 
other craft can stop or take the consequences, there are 
plenty of people on the decks to murmur approbation. 
That is the proper spirit. No stop for anything. A 
collision ? Well, — they would rather run that risk than 
get to the office late. 

Through the ferry-houses, up the side streets, the mov- 
ing, wriggling throng from New Jersey is shunted. It does 
not now bother with surface cars, for it is easier to 
get up toward the Broadway ridge by foot. It follows 
the sidewalks, fills them full to the curbstones, and winds 
on over gratings, around upright showcases, along iron 
steps, intent upon arriving at a certain place at a certain 



72 THE NEW NEW YORK 

hour, and not intent upon anything else. Obstructions, 
such as packing-cases being loaded on a truck, or a belated 
ash-man rolling a barrel across the sidewalk, divert the 
throng, but does not stop it. It turns out into the street, 
goes around, and then resumes its accustomed flow. 
Hawkers of knick-knacks, toy venders, fruit and flower 
peddlers, newsboys, yell and shout at it, but it does not 
swerve. It does not care for noise ; but let some stranger, 
meeting another stranger, stop on the sidewalk to shake 
hands and talk for a moment, and instantly everyone is 
angry. The stream is backed up by meeting with a snag, 
and the chances are favorable for the snag-makers being 
pushed into the gutter. At any rate, they are quickly 
made to realize with Mr. Brownell that, '' Whoever is not 
in a hurry is in the way." 

It is the realization that the crowd itself is ''in the way" 
that leads many of its units to drop out of it at side streets 
and make longer routes by less frequented thoroughfares. 
Often the longest way round proves the shortest way to 
the office ; and there are many desertions from the throng 
that winds up Courtlandt or Chambers Street. However, 
the main body goes on and finally pushes into Broadway. 
There it mingles and is lost in the greater procession, some 
of which is going north, some south, and some plunging 
in front of trucks and trolleys in the attempt to get on 
the other side of the street. It is a swift and compelling 
procession. You move with it and at its set pace, other- 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 73 

wise someone will be treading on your heels. In fact, 
to do as the crowd does, is almost compulsory. 

The objective point of the crowd is undoubtedly at 
Broad and Wall streets, though there is no lack of activity 
along Broadway between Fulton Street and the Custom 
House, or for that matter along Park Row or on Broadway 
above the Post-Office. Still, there is an eddy in the region 
of the Stock Exchange where men drift about in circles 
as though they had reached their destination ; and tow- 
ards this eddy people on the side streets seem alternately 
drawn in and sent out by dozens and scores and hundreds. 

Those who come and go in and about "the Street," 
are not necessarily heavy operators on the exchanges. 
They may be only clerks and messengers, office factotums. 
Some of them may have no business at all and are drawn 
there only by the movement of the throng. It is even 
believable that a part of the eddy is made up of driftwood 
— derelicts that have been stripped and deserted and are 
now floating idly about in the strom. The unfortunates 
that wander penniless in the Casino Gardens at Monte 
Carlo make up a considerable percentage of the so-called 
''gay throng" there, and Wall Street has its numerous 
shorn lambs called "capitalists" or "brokers" that still 
stand in the street and bleat. 

They are all men. The women do some trading in 
stocks, too, but usually it is over the 'phone from up 
town. Petticoats in the lower city during business hours 



74 THE NEW NEW YORK 

are, of course, seen, but infrequently as compared with 
coats and trousers. And usually they belong to stenog- 
raphers and typewriters who are employed in the various 
offices. The majority of women living in upper New York 
never go down town from year end to year end. The whole 
lower part of the city is given up to men and their business. 
They are nearly all what are called middlemen, and their 
business is betwixt and between. Few of them are, in 
any sense, original producers. They are doing something 
"on commission " ; trading in stocks or cotton or pig-iron 
or petroleum, buying and selling for a percentage of the 
account. Even if they are selling tickets on steamers and 
railways, or writing life insurance policies, or practicing 
law up a sky-scraper, they are still men working for fees 
and salaries — middlemen who adjust and make possible, 
but do not produce. 

So it is that the down-town crowd, as it winds hither 
and yon along the thoroughfares, is a peculiar crowd. 
On the surface it has little of the stronger if rougher 
element in it, — no mechanics in their shirt-sleeves, 
no stevedores, no miners, no mill-hands, no laborers. The 
immense foreign population of New York is not here in 
evidence, the negro is seen only occasionally, and such 
native types as the Yankee, the Southerner, the Missour- 
ian, the Californian, are not recognizable. In fact, it is a 
select, gentlemanly-looking, somewhat whey-faced multi- 
tude that one meets with in the Wall Street region. Its 




Pl. 16. — ExcnANCK I'i.ack 



THE STREETS IN THE MORNING 75 

hands are white, its body is fragile but active, its head is 
large and somewhat feverish. It works chiefly with its 
head. It thus wears out its nerves and is threatened 
continually with hysteria ; but its tenacity and endurance 
are remarkable. It holds on, worries through, and in the 
end gains its point. 

As these people pass you on the street, dressed fashion- 
ably, moving alertly, saluting each other half flippantly, 
you wonder if they can be the business men of New York 
who pile up such wonderful statistics in banking, trade, 
and commerce. Yes; some of them. Of course, the 
great majority of them hold subordinate positions. They 
are book-keepers, managing clerks, salesmen, little brokers, 
hangers-on. The heads of corporations and large institu- 
tions — the so-called '' captains of industry" — get to 
their offices by different ways than the sidewalks, and 
spend little time wandering along Broadway or elsewhere ; 
but their lieutenants and under-ofHcers, those who will some 
day become captains, show in the crowd. 

It may occur to you that these rather effeminate- 
looking, city-bred folk can know not a great deal about the 
larger aspects of manufacturing, commerce, and agri- 
culture ; that they must be ignorant of the practical 
workings of railways, steel mills, and copper mines; and 
that their trading in securities, their sale of grain and 
cotton, their handling of cattle, iron, and oil is all more or 
less of a guess and a gamble. Yes; but it might be 



76 THE NEW NEW YORK 

dangerous for you to presume upon that. The New- 
York broker knows the financial side of America very 
well indeed ; he is an excellent promoter and the cleverest 
of all commission men. It sounds righteous, and it is 
just now politically proper, to call him "a gambler" ; but 
it is not an accurate term. Nor is it generically true. 
There are gamblers in New York, and on the exchanges, 
beyond a doubt ; but there are also thousands of straight- 
forw^ard men of finance without whom we should fare 
badly. The country needs its Wall Street to handle its 
enterprises of great moment. 

Are these then the representative men of New York? 
Yes and no. They are one kind of New Yorker, — the 
kind that figures with undue prominence perhaps in the 
newspapers, — but there are many kinds of people in the 
city. You shall not be able to point out the type, but you 
shall see many types. Among them the man in Wall 
Street is certainly to be reckoned with. He plays a very 
important part in the commerce and trade of the city. 
All told, perhaps the bankers of New York are the most 
powerful group of men on the western continent, and they 
certainly lend an atmosphere to the down-town district, 
if not to the whole city. 



DOWN TOWN 



Pl. V. 



LOWER BROADWAY ELECTION TIME 



HOITOajH vAwiAO^a SHWOJ .v 



,jS 




^ 



i»'.*ii'»»aM»,j»*'W7 ,^ 



CHAPTER V 

DOWN TOWN 

It is difficult to convince the average person from 
without that everyone who transacts business in lower 
New York is not a banker, a money broker, or in some 
way directly connected with the Stock Exchange. The 
tradition has gone abroad that the only trading below 
the City Hall is trading in stocks, and that ''down town" 
really means "Wall Street." Of course, it is not so. The 
people about the Stock Exchange, and the folk that press 
along the narrow width of Wall Street from Broad to 
Broadway, give one an exaggerated impression. There 
is trading going on in and about these streets wdthout a 
doubt, a great volume of it; but there are also other 
transactions, taking place in other places near at hand, 
that have little or nothing to do with securities — transac- 
tions carried on by people who never go near the Stock 
Exchange and never trade in stocks of any kind. 

There is another impression abroad among strangers 
to the effect that most of the business of Wall Street is 
transacted on the sidewalk. The phrase ''in the Street" 
has been taken too literally, as meaning that operators in 

79 



80 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the stock market carry on business involving millions in an 
unconventional shirt-sleeve manner while leaning against a 
lamp post, or smoking a cigarette in a restaurant. True 
enough, there are brokers who deal in securities on the 
sidewalk, securities of all kinds; and sometimes the 
transactions of this curb market are of some volume. 
And, true again it is, that the final word in a great ''deal" 
may at times be passed by the head of one house to the head 
of another house while meeting casually in the street, or in 
some midday lunching club. But, generally speaking, 
business is not transacted that way. It is a little more 
formal, even in a great democracy. The bulk of sales are 
made indoors, on the exchanges. The crowd in the street 
means little more in barter and sale at the corner of Wall 
and Broad than along the sidewalk of Park Row or about 
Bowling Green. 

There are so many people pushing along the sidewalks, 
or hurrying from curb to curb in the lower city, that the 
superficial observer quickly concludes that all the world 
is afoot and moving. That is another common mistake. 
The great throng of humanity that pours into Broadway 
and its side streets must go somewhere, else it would 
speedily choke up and fill the thoroughfares. As a matter 
of fact it begins to melt away as soon as it arrives. It 
disappears in side entrances, in hallways, down basements, 
up elevator shafts. Swinging circular doors, compressed 
air doors, slam doors, receive it. Iron wickets, steel gates, 



DOWN TOWN 81 

bronze grilles, open and close for it. There is a slide and a 
click of the door, something like a long breath from the 
elevator, and almost before one can count his fingers he 
has arrived at the twentieth story. The number of 
people in the streets is enormous, but there are ten times 
the number seated on stools and chairs in the countless 
offices of the tall buildings. The great crowd is within 
rather than without. The committee on the Congestion 
of Population has estimated that if all the people in all 
the lower city left their offices for the street at one time, 
it would require six layers of sidewalks like the present 
ones to accommodate them. 

It is not the sky-scraper alone that absorbs the multi- 
tude, though it does its share. The old-time granite and 
sandstone ''blocks," the iron-clads of the seventies, even 
the ramshackle brick buildings slipping away toward the 
rivers, do service in the providing of office room. And 
it is remarkable how very little room is required to do a 
very extensive and prosperous business — that is, if one 
chooses to judge by advertisement and letter-head alone. 
Desk space is at a premium everywhere, and a spot large 
enough to hold two chairs is often vantage ground sufficient 
for a Napoleon of finance to dazzle the back country with 
his weekly bulletin of "points" on Wall Street. But 
aside from such pretension there is a great volume of busi- 
ness done in very small space in lower New York. The 
demand for quarters creates an exaggerated price, and 



82 THE NEW NEW YORK 

"office rent" is a large item in the yearly budget of every 
concern. Yet, large or small, the office is a desideratum. 
It is headquarters, and there transactions receive their 
last analysis and are paid for. 

There are zones or districts in this lower town that seem 
sacred to certain kinds of business, and where other kinds 
do not flourish, practically do not exist at all. It seems 
that by some social instinct, or feeling of mutual protec- 
tion, the birds of a feather are disposed to flock together. 
The stock and bond people flock around Wall Street, 
which, of course, means a district more than a street, the 
produce brokers form another group around Bowling 
Green, the shipping agents gather along lower Broadway, 
the insurance men between Wall and the City Hall, the 
coal and iron men on Courtlandt, and so on. The nucleus 
in each case is usually formed by an ''exchange" where 
operators meet to get information, and to give and take 
orders. The interest of these exchanges, to the visitor, 
largely hinges upon the apparently excited movements of 
the operators. The Stock Exchange is the one usually 
visited by the country cousins in Gotham, who sometimes 
come away with the impression that they have seen a 
lunatic asylum temporarily freed from the restraint of 
the keepers. The method of bidding, with its suggestion 
of insanity in the actions, looks, and cries of the bidders, 
seems as necessary to the Stock Exchange as hammering 
and noise to a boiler shop. It is not, however, so hysterical 



DOWN TOWN 83 

or frenzied as it looks. Most of the cry is physical and 
has for its aim the recognition of the crier as a bidder. To 
those in the thick of the bidding it is often as matter-of- 
fact as the loud announcement of the train ushers in the 
railway stations, or the street cry of the newsboys or 
fruit hawkers. 

Moreover (to shatter another delusion), the operators 
down below on the floor are not the Wall Street capitalists 
whose names are so familiar, and whose stock manipula- 
tions are read about in the newspapers. On the contrary, 
they are merely the executants of orders, called ''floor- 
brokers." Among them are ''board members" of large 
firms, who are looking to it that orders are properly filled ; 
sub-commission men, who work for other brokers and take 
a slice of the commission; and "room traders," who are 
sometimes used as stalking horses by large firms to cover 
up their transactions. They are all either bulls or bears, 
and are intent upon lifting up or beating down the market, 
as their interest may lie. They make a great noise and 
transact a large volume of business; but the people for 
whom they are doing the business do not appear on the 
floor, are not seen. 

The Produce Exchange on Beaver Street and Broad- 
way does for all manner of produce substantially what the 
Stock Exchange does for stocks. That is to say, its mem- 
bers buy and sell, in a "pit" or depressed ring in the floor, 
wheat, oats, barley, corn, feed, flour, tallow, oil, lard, tur- 



84 THE NEW NEW YORK 

pentine, resin — all manner of general produce. There is 
also a great deal of miscellaneous and contingent business 
transacted within the building. Sales of cargoes, arrange- 
ments for shipping, lighterage, insurance, may be speedily 
made and concluded without leaving the exchange. 
Reports from all sources are collected and bulletined, 
quotations here and abroad are given, prospects of grow- 
ing crops with daily and weekly receipts in New York, and 
stock on hand in London and elsewhere are announced. 
The volume of business continues to grow each year at an 
astounding rate. The exchange itself profits by this. 
It started in small beginnings, under the blue sky, on the 
sidewalk. It was not formally known as the Produce 
Exchange until 1868, and it did not move into its present 
massive building until 1884. Since then its membership 
has increased to several thousands ; and its influence upon 
trade and transportation has become most potent. 

The Maritime Exchange is closely connected with the 
Produce Exchange. Its business is to promote the mari- 
time interests of the city ; and those who do business on or 
with the sea — agents, shippers, commission merchants, 
warehousemen, importers, brokers, marine underwriters, 
wreckers, ship-chandlers — are eligible for member- 
ship. The exchange keeps records of the arrivals and 
departures of ships, their movements about the world, 
and their sudden exits by fire and storm. It also keeps 
tables of the imports and exports, regulates and reports 




1*1,. 17. — r.vKK Row Building 



DOWN TOWN 85 

upon navigation and lighthouses, and promotes favor- 
able river and harbor legislation. The Customs House 
and the Post-Office, as well as the newspapers, get much 
of the news about the come and go of shipping from this 
source. 

Akin to these exchanges are others dealing with the 
special needs and wants of special industries. The 
Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange, among 
other things, affords every facility and every information 
for the sale and shipping of petroleum. Each year the 
sales there run up to something over a billion barrels. 
The Cotton Exchange on Beaver Street deals in everything 
connected with the cotton industry and the marketing of 
the product. The Builders' Exchange has to do with the 
buying and selling of all kinds of building supplies such 
as cement, brick, stone, and the like; while the Metal 
Exchange on Pearl Street, the Wool Exchange on West 
Broadway, the Fruit Exchange on Park Place, the 
Brewers' Exchange on East Fifteenth Street, the Silk 
Association, the Shoe and Leather Exchange, all serve 
a purpose in promoting business in those commodities. 
Then there is that old-time gathering of jewelers on 
Maiden Lane about the Jewelers' Board of Trade, with 
the pre-Revolutionary Chamber of Commerce now on 
Liberty Street, and a Fire Insurance Exchange on 
Nassau Street. 

Besides these centers, which act as magnets in draw- 



86 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ing together the people directly interested in the various 
industries, there are spots or areas settled by people 
who have allied or identical interests. On Park Row 
and about Printing House Square are scores of buildings 
devoted to the publishing of newspapers; about Grand 
Street there are blocks given over to the wholesaling of 
dry-goods, down in the hollow of Canal Street are many 
freight and passenger railway offices, not far away are 
regions dedicated to shoes and leather, or groceries, or 
artificial flowers, or feathers and milliners' supplies. 
These spots, that sometimes cover many blocks, are, 
of course, broken here and there by interlopers in other 
businesses; and there are literally thousands of firms 
in lower New York that belong to no group and are 
not affiliated with any of the exchanges. There is hardly 
an important manufacturing concern in the United 
States that has not some sort of headquarters in New 
York below the City Hall, and hardly a great shipping 
or commission firm in any of the large towns that has not 
an office in the lower city. 

The great majority of these offices are merely brokerage 
places where transactions are financed or arranged for, 
but not where the commodities themselves are actually 
delivered. The buying or selling is "for the account," 
and may result in a delivery at some future time in some 
other place; or it may be that no delivery at all is 
effected — the settlement being made by paying the 




Vl. is. — City Invkstment and Singer Huii.nixGS 



DOWN TOWN 87 

balance, be it profit or loss. The sales, however, where 
actual delivery at some time and place is made, as in 
stocks, bonds, steel, sugar, cotton, wheat, oil, dry-goods, 
leather, are very heavy. If the estimate of them were 
given in dollars, it would have to be in billions, for millions 
would be inadequate to express it. 

What "actual delivery" means in produce and manu- 
factures, aside from delivery for domestic uses, is sug- 
gested by the volume of New York's foreign trade. It 
is five or six times as large as that of any other Ameri- 
can city, and amounts to nearly one-half of the whole 
foreign trade of the United States. Each year over 
three thousand steamers and a thousand or more sailing 
vessels come up the bay from foreign ports. They bring 
the bulk of the things imported into the country, 
whether raw materials or finished products. Cotton, 
linen, wool, silk, furs worked up into wearing apparel, 
rubber, coffee, sugar, tobacco brought in crude and after- 
ward refined or manufactured in New York, are the 
leading items. 

The city's export trade is even greater than its import 
trade ; but by comparison with other American cities, and 
considering the total exports of the country, it is not 
preponderant. Several large cities contend in the foreign 
shipments of wheat, corn, and barley, and New York 
handles only about one-quarter of the whole foreign 
consignment. Of animal products it ships fully one-half. 



88 THE NEW NEW YORK 

but of cotton, again, only about one-tenth. Still, all 
this when considered in relation to the production and 
trade of the country is of huge volume. Once more, if 
it be estimated in dollars, it must be in millions ; and, if 
the domestic trade of the city with the interior country 
and the coastwise commerce of the port are included, 
the figures must be written in billions. 

And even yet the ''business" of the city is not half 
stated. No one seems to think of New York as a manu- 
facturing town. It is considered a shipping port, a city 
of commission merchants and brokers, a place where 
wealthy people live because there is no soft-coal smoke 
as in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, or Chicago. A sooty air, 
blackened buildings, clanging trains of cars, and long 
lines of mill-hands in blue-jeans are not in evidence; 
therefore it is assumed that only a genteel book-keeping 
and profit-taking business goes on here. But not so. 
Under the blue sky and clear light of New York a larger 
and more valuable series of manufactures is produced 
than in any other city on the continent. Manhattan 
taken by itself, ranks first, and Brooklyn standing alone, 
ranks fourth in the volume and value of these manu- 
factures. Neither of them beats into salable shape 
steel rails and iron beams like Pittsburg, nor puts up 
for the market canned and salted meats like Chicago; 
but they manufacture hundreds of small articles used 
in households here and elsewhere about the world. 



DOWN TOWN 89 

The item of clothing alone is something staggering in 
its figures. The large foreign population of Manhattan 
furnishes the necessary labor for this kind of work — 
much of it being done by piece-work in the tenements. 
The manufacture of cigars and cigarettes, of lace and 
millinery goods, of feathers, toys, and miscellaneous 
gimcrackery, is also carried on by the tenement-house 
people. Then there is no end to the establishments 
that turn out furniture, musical instruments, electrical 
apparatus, tools, chemicals. The publishing and print- 
ing of books and papers is also a large industry ; and the 
brewing of beers, the refining of sugar and molasses, the 
preparing of spices and coffees are probably the largest 
enterprises of all. 

In Manhattan the majority of these manufactures are 
carried on in small buildings ; or, if large, they are so far 
from the usually frequented avenues and streets that 
they are not remarked. The west side of the city, below 
Thirty-Fourth Street, is dotted with them; there are 
many scattered through the east side near the river; 
and there are others to the north along the Harlem. 
The Brooklyn water-front again is lined with factories, 
Long Island City has many of them, and Staten Island 
is almost girdled by them. Everywhere in the sparsely 
populated boroughs of Greater New York that have 
water-fronts, factories have sprung up. They are not 
welcomed by any except the persistent money-getters, 



90 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and, in fact, they are fast making New York unfit for 
residence ; but they must be counted in summing up the 
city's resources. And so, for practical purposes, the great 
manufacturing interests on Long Island, along the 
Hudson, and over in North Jersey in towns such as 
Newark and Paterson, must be reckoned with as part 
of the city's wealth and business. That reckoning, once 
more, must be made in billions, for the million-dollar 
mark is not sufficient to indicate it. 

And we have not yet so much as thought of the vast 
retail trade of the up-town districts. This is not merely 
the supplying of the immediate wants of one section of 
New York by the people in another section of New York. 
It is something more than selling or trading with one's 
self or one's towns-people. The retail trade of New York 
reaches to all quarters of the United States. What it 
comes to in figures would be difficult to determine with 
accuracy ; but we shall not be far from the truth if we con- 
tinue with our designation of billions. The word seems 
to smack of pretension or extravagance, but it is 
neither the one thing nor the other ; it is the simple fact. 
New York numbers its inhabitants by the millions, and 
it must have something higher than that whereby to 
count its capital and its earnings. 

Whether it is necessary that all the vast business 
interests of the metropolis, and of the country at large, 
should have offices down town under the lee of Wall 




Pl>. 19. TkKMINAL liuILDINGS FROM WkST StKKKT 



DOWN TOWN 91 

Street, is a question that needs little discussion. No doubt 
many of them would not suffer extinction if they had 
offices up town in the region of Forty-Second Street. 
The New York Times and The Herald have proved, at least, 
that there is no absolute necessity for newspaper enter- 
prises being located on Printing House Square; and as 
much might be proved regarding the offices of shipping 
agents, insurance men, lawyers, and many others who 
now crowd the lower city districts. 

There is, however, an argument for the other side. 
It is a part of a banker's capital that he hail from Wall 
Street and have an office there, just as it is a hall-mark 
of quality, an insignia of respectability, for a jeweler to 
send his circulars out into the country from Maiden Lane. 
Moving up town, to many of these houses, would spell 
ruin, — or at least they so regard it. It would be a losing 
of identity. Besides, there is business convenience in 
close quarters and short distances. A central hive saves 
time and energy. And so strong has the down-town in- 
stinct become that one might remove the very hive itself 
and still the bees would swarm on the platform where it 
formerly stood. 

Of course the come and go of the throng each morning 
and evening, the push and surge and scramble along the 
fence rail, are caused by the endeavor to get in or out of 
the hive. Of course, again, the necessity for accommoda- 
tions for the tenants of the hive has made the ground space 



92 THE NEW NEW YORK 

of the lower city phenomenally valuable. So great be- 
came the value of that land a few years ago, that a bet- 
ter utilization of it in buildings grew to be a necessity. 
Out of that necessity came the much used and much 
abused sky-scraper, the tall building that everyone 
scolds about and yet finds too useful to get on without 
— the one architectural success in which America is 
wholly original and beholden to none. 

But the sky-scraper is of so much importance in New 
York to-day that it requires a chapter of its own. 




Pl. 20. — Little Flatiron, Maiden Lane 



SKY-SCRAPERS 



PL. Vl. BUILDING A SKY-SCRAPER 



^3qA?f02 Y.-W2 A oniaj/us 



.iV .j*^ 



CHAPTER VI 

SKY-SCRAPEES 

The story is told of a Brahmin philosopher, sitting 
with a friend in his walled garden, and jesting over the 
smallness of the enclosure. It was not very long nor yet 
again very wide; but how deep down it was, and what 
wonderful height it had ! The depth beneath and the 
space overhead were unavailable possessions to him. He 
smiled at what he owned yet could not grasp or utilize. 

But land values have radically changed in modern 
days, especially in America. Any one who owns a small 
plot of ground in a large American city need not smile over 
its height and depth, for those are now very valuable dimen- 
sions. They can both be turned to profit, turned into very 
tangible assets. The clever modern has found a way of 
not only digging in the earth, but of rising into the air 
on pinions of steel and sustaining his altitude almost 
indefinitely in time and in space. 

It is a very cramped and limited region of New York 
that lies below the City Hall. It has always lacked 
elbow-room ; it has always been crowded. The mere sur- 
face dimensions of it were exhausted years ago. That, 
however, did not stop the influx of people seeking office 

95 



96 THE NEW NEW YORK 

room there. To accommodate the continued and increased 
inrush from year to year various expedients were put 
forth. At first the land-owners began burrowing in the 
ground, fitting up quarters below the curb line, — quarters 
where business was carried on only by artificial light at 
noonday. That proved, however, scarcely a temporary 
relief. It was wholly inadequate. Following this ex- 
pedient, or perhaps contemporary with it, there was an 
adding of stories upon the old foundations — an increase 
from, say, four to six and eight floors. But there were 
limitations to that. People would not climb flights of 
stairs; and, again, brick could not be laid upon brick 
indefinitely. The first objection was, in a measure, done 
away with by the invention of the passenger elevator. 
From 1860 to 1880 steam and hydraulic elevators were 
used, but it was not until about 1888 that electric ele- 
vators came into vogue. 

With the coming of the elevator the eight-story build- 
ings began to pay better in their top floors than in their 
middle or lower ones. ''High livers," so called, preferred 
the light and air up aloft. Everything began to rise with 
the elevator — buildings, prices, ambitions, expectations ; 
but still the right planning of the modern office building 
had not been reached. The eight-story or ten-story struc- 
ture of marble or brick was too heavy, too bulky in the 
walls. As the height increased the foundation walls 
had to be thickened proportionately. To spread out at 



SKY-SCRAPERS 97 

the bottom in walls was to lose the advantage gained in 
offices at the top. Again, the additional number of 
elevators required by the increased number of occupants 
began to fill up space and lessen the available floor area. 
Iron came into the construction and was used for beams ; 
iron pillars superseded stone pillars ; the bulk in the lower 
walls was thus slightly cut down. Shortly thereafter an 
iron core to carry the floors was used on the inside of 
masonry walls, and a double construction was brought 
about. Both shell and core were self-sustaining. 

And yet this new plan added only a few more stories, 
and left the larger problem still unsolved. The walls that 
had to bear merely their own weight soon began to thicken 
again at the base as the building grew in height. Brick, 
granite, marble, and even iron, alone or in combination, 
were found wanting. After a certain weight was put upon 
them, a certain height was gained, there came a danger 
line. What stronger, more durable, less bulky material 
could be used to carry into the region of. twenty stories ? 
The answer came back in plans for a structure of steel — 
something following the general design of a bridge truss 
standing on end with the strain so adjusted by brace and 
girder, that the whole weight of the walls and floors would 
be finally conducted downward by post and beam until 
brought to bear upon the rock foundations. The result 
of the plans was the modern sky-scraper. 

It must not be forgotten that necessity was the mother 



98 THE NEW NEW YORK 

that invented and brought forth the sky-scraper. It was a 
device at first to utilize small plots of valuable, heavily- 
taxed ground, to make these plots not only more valuable, 
but more remunerative in rents. The steel construction 
is now used on large plots of ground because it has been 
found a cheap and profitable mode of building; but that 
came about as a growth from the original idea. In its 
inception it was designed to meet a more positive need, to 
make ten rooms where only one was before, and thus to 
increase revenue and render tax assessments less appalling. 
The story of the conception and the building of the first 
sky-scraper in New York will illustrate this. 

The Tower Building on lower Broadway was the initial 
steel skeleton building erected in the city, and its architect 
was Bradford Lee Gilbert. It was put up in 1888-89 on a 
plot of ground twenty-one and a half feet in width. 
There was a frontage on Broadway of that width, leading 
back to a larger space on New Street. Using the Broad- 
way frontage as a mere entrance to the larger premises 
at the back was an extravagance which the Tower 
Building was designed to do away with. Mr. Gilbert's 
plans called for a structure of thirteen stories (about one 
hundred and sixty feet in height) to stand upon this space 
of twenty-one feet. The enclosing walls were to be twelve 
inches in width and to bear no weight.^ The weight of 

' The space saved by these walls alone, so much thinner than the 
previous stone construction, afterward amounted to $10,000 a year in 
rentals. 



4. 




Pl. 21. — SkV-S( i;.\l'l.i;s 1 liOM llliOOKLYX llKKill 



SKY-SCRAPERS 99 

the walls and the floors was to be transmitted to the steel 
columns, and thus passed on down to the cement foot- 
ings of the foundation. Of course there was objection to 
the building at once. Architects declared it unsafe and 
impracticable, and the newspapers said the plan was 
''idiotic." 

''When the actual construction of the building began/' 
says Mr. Gilbert in a New York Times interview, "my 
troubles increased tenfold. The mere suggestion of a build- 
ing 21^ feet wide, rising to the height of 160 feet above 
its footings, filled everybody who had no particular concern 
in the matter, with alarm. Finally an engineer with whom 
I had worked for many years came to me with a protest. 
When I paid no attention to him, he wrote to the owner. 
The owner came to me with the letter. He was afraid the 
building would blow over and that he would be subject 
to heavy damages. My personal position in the matter 
and that of the Building Department that had given me 
the permit, never seemed to strike him at all. Finally I 
drew out my strain sheets, showing the wind bracings from 
cellar to roof, and demonstrated by analysis that the harder 
the wind blew the safer the building would be ; as under 
one hundred tons, under hurricane pressure, while the 
wind was blowing seventy miles an hour, the structure 
was cared for by its footings and was safest. . . . 

"This seemed to satisfy him and we went ahead. One 
Sunday morning, when the walls of the building were 
ready for the roof, I awoke to find the wind blowing a 
hurricane. That gale is a matter of record in the Weather 
Bureau. With a friend, who had implicit faith in my 
plans, I went down town to the sky-scraper. A crowd 
of persons who expected it to blow over stood at a respect- 



100 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ful distance to watch the crash. Janitors and watchmen 
in adjoining buildings and structures across the street 
moved out. They were afraid of being crushed to death, 
and said unpleasant things about my steel building. 
I secured a plumb-line and began to climb the ladders that 
the workmen had left in place when they quit work the 
previous evening. My friend went with me as far as the 
tenth story. The persons who looked at us from below 
called us fools. When I reached the thirteenth story, 
the gale was so fierce I could not stand upright. I crawled 
on my hands and knees along the scaffolding and dropped 
the plumb-line. There was not the slightest vibration. 
The building stood as steady as a rock in the sea. . . ." ^ 

Since 1889 many steel buildings have towered into the 
air, and many improvements have been made upon the 
original design. To-day the sky-scraper is still regarded 
as the best means of making heavily taxed land profitable, 
though that idea has become somewhat merged in the 
general value of the building principle. The New Trinity 
Building on Broadway, though not the largest nor the 
highest in the city, is a good modern instance of the finan- 

* This was in 1889, and ten years later, so universal was the acceptance 
of the steel-constructed building, that the original model, the Tower 
Building, had become ancient history. That it might not be wholly 
forgotten, the Society of Architectural Iron Manufacturers of New York 
placed a tablet upon the building to commemorate its erection, giving 
the names of both the architect and the construction company that 
built it. It is worthy of note in passing, because it is suggestive of the 
swift transitions taking place in this new world, that the marvelous 
sky-scraper of 1889 is already doomed to be torn down to make room 
for a greater building, a greater marvel. 



SKY-SCRAPERS 101 

cial side of the sky-scraper, and may be used here in illus- 
tration. The plot of ground upon which it stands is two 
hundred and sixty feet long, with forty feet of frontage 
on Broadway and forty-seven feet at the rear on Church 
Street. This land alone, before the erection of the new 
building, was valued at $2,000,000. What is more to 
the point, it was taxed at that valuation. Under our 
system of taxation, taxes are not levied upon the income 
of a property, but upon the assessed valuation whether 
there is any income attached or not. In London, for 
instance, it is quite the reverse of this. A man owning 
ground on Piccadilly could turn it into a cow-pasture if 
he would, and pay taxes on its income as a cow-pasture ; 
but if he held the same amount of property in lower New 
York, he would have to pay in taxes something like two 
per cent on several millions of dollars. This turn of the 
tax would bring him face to face with one of, say, three 
propositions. He would have to put the land to a more 
profitable use than pasturing cows, or sell it to someone 
who could so employ it, or pay a hundred thousand 
dollars or more a year for the privilege of defying the 
inevitable. 

Our foreign friends, who greatly wonder why we cannot 
be content with five- or six-story buildings in the lower 
city, as our grandfathers were, fail to understand our 
system of taxation, fail to understand that the tax bill 
keeps mounting higher with increased valuations, and 



102 THE NEW NEW YORK 

that the income must increase to meet it. The tax on the 
ground alone of the Trinity property had become so 
enormous that the income of the old structure could not 
meet it. Hence the old came down and the new went up 
— went up three hundred feet, until one could, from 
its upper stories, look down on the spire of Trinity Church, 
that for so many years had been the high point of the 
city's sky line. The necessity for more room, the neces- 
sity for a better utilization of the ground space, the neces- 
sity for more rent money to pay increased tax bills, all 
combined to bring the new structure into existence. 

Between two and three millions of dollars were spent 
in the construction of the New Trinity Building. This, 
with its land valued at two millions, raised the gross 
valuation to about five millions of dollars. To meet the 
taxes and the interest charges upon this sum there are now 
some twenty-one stories that pay, on an average, twenty- 
three thousand dollars annual rental for each story. 
The ground floor alone rents for seventy-five thousand 
dollars a year. A pencil and the back of an envelope will 
enable anyone, in a few minutes, to figure out the business 
success of the enterprise. Everything sooner or later 
resolves itself into a matter of finance, especially in New 
York; and things must "pay," otherwise they will not 
last for long. 

The cost of these huge structures makes rapidity in con- 
struction something of a necessity. Five millions of dollars 




AT Night on Foundations 



SKY-SCRAPERS 103 

drawing interest at five per cent means a quarter of a 
million dollars a year ; and the sooner the building begins 
earning rentals, the better for those who have the financial 
end of the enterprise to carry. Hence the speed with which 
the average sky-scraper is erected. A few months at the 
most is often sufficient to see it in place, fully equipped, 
and occupied. This speed in construction is greatly 
facilitated by the peculiar nature of the building. Once 
the foundations are laid the erection of the steel frame 
is merely a matter of bolting and riveting so many 
beams, girders, cantilevers, and brackets. This work can 
usually be carried on in many places at the same time, and 
large forces of men can be employed in day and night 
shifts. So it is that there is some truth in the common 
exaggeration that sky-scrapers are put up overnight. 
One can actually see the steel platforms grow from hour 
to hour as they lift higher and higher into the air. 

The frame of steel is the core of the building. It is 
the only thing that bears or carries any weight. Every- 
thing that is put on afterwards is fastened to or hangs 
from this skeleton — with the possible exception of one 
or two stories at the bottom which, in their walls, may 
bear their own weight. The upper walls, whether of 
brick, terra-cotta, cement, or stone, depend from the 
steel structure to which they are attached by brackets. 
They may give the impression of being self-supporting, 
they may beguile one into thinking that back of the walls 



104 THE NEW NEW YORK 

is solid masonry; but they are only so much shield to 
keep out the weather. Just so with the floors, windows, 
balconies, cornices, railings, roofs. They are not sup- 
ported by the walls from below, but by steel brackets 
or trusses from within. With such a novel building 
principle it is possible to place the outer walls on the 
twentieth story before those of the first story are 
started, or to put up the roof before the window frames 
are in. 

The foundations are the vital spots of the building. 
Hence the necessity for their being sunk deep to bed-rock. 
Some of them go down nearly a hundred feet underground. 
This is compulsory because lower New York is underlaid 
with beds of sand and ooze from ten to eighty feet thick. 
The caisson method of working through them is employed. 
Air-tight, bottomless boxes are driven through the drift 
(the water being kept out by compressed air) to bed-rock 
and afterward filled up with cement. It is upon these 
cement piers that the columns of the sky-scraper rest. The 
foundations being difficult to build are often items of 
great expense, costing sometimes half a million dollars 
for a single building. The weight they bear is enormous. 
The steel structure of bolted plates may look light and 
frail at a distance, but some of the larger buildings have 
upwards of twenty thousand tons of steel in them, which 
is by no means an insignificant figure. The walls, 
cornices, and roof differ in weight according to the mate- 



SKY-SCRAPERS 105 

rials used ; and, inasmuch as they have only to hold on, 
they are not a great problem to the builder, though of 
importance to the architect. 

There are other figures, used in connection with these 
buildings and their details, more amazing than those of 
cost or foundation or weight. The newspapers love to 
juggle with them, and to show by pictorial illustration how 
much higher are the steel structures than, say, an ocean- 
steamer placed on end ; or to figure out how many acres 
of ground their floor space would cover, or how many 
scrubwomen are required to keep the windows clean. 
The very high buildings are the ones that usually bristle 
with these statistics. The Singer Building, for instance, 
in addition to having its foundations ninety-two feet 
below the curb, rises above the curb in forty-two stories 
to a height of six hundred and twelve feet. Its outer 
walls are of terra-cotta, metal, and glass — great areas 
of glass. It is more of a tower than a building; yet, 
even so, it has over 400,000 square feet of floor space. 
In sheer altitude the tower of the Metropolitan Building 
on Madison Square goes beyond it. This is some seven 
hundred feet in height, rising in fifty stories, far above 
its own main building, — rising, indeed, like a beacon 
tower or light-house above all New York. There is no 
reason to think, however, that it will long retain its 
preeminence. A thousand feet are almost as easily 
attained as seven hundred. It is not a question of 



106 THE NEW NEW YORK 

engineering, but of finance, that is to be considered.^ 
If still higher buildings will pay, they will probably be 
built. 

In office capacity the high towers are not so remark- 
able as the buildings of more bulk and less altitude. 
The City Investing Company Building is only four 
hundred feet in height and has only thirty-six stories, 
but its floor area is 686,000 feet, and there were seven- 
teen thousand tons of steel used in its construction. In 
sheer "bigness" the Terminal Buildings on Courtlandt 
and Church streets go beyond this. The two buildings 
stand linked together by a bridge like Siamese twins 
and are twenty-one stories in height. Their foundations 
are seventy-five feet below the curb, and in this deep ex- 
cavation are placed the terminal stations of the Hudson 
and Manhattan Railroad, which operates the Hudson 
tunnels in connection with a subway on the west side 
of New York. The superstructure required twenty- 
six thousand tons of steel and provides eighteen acres of 
floor space, four thousand offices, thirty-nine passenger 
elevators (twenty-two of them express cars), five thousand 
windows, thirty thousand electric lights; and no one 
knows how many janitors, engineers, firemen, locksmiths, 

* There has been a proposal recently made by the Building Code Re- 
vision Commission that a limitation of 300 feet for a sixty-foot street 
and 135 feet for a forty-five-foot street be imposed upon the high build- 
ings; but this, if adopted, will not check the sky-scraper, except on the 
alleys and very narrow streets. 




Pl. 23. — Among the Tall Buildings 



SKY-SCRAPERS 107 

glaziers, painters, plumbers, to keep it running properly. 
It called in all the trades to build it and needs a great many 
of them to continue its existence. It might be added in 
parenthesis that the services of a financier are also needed 
to look after the items of rents and repairs — especially 
the latter. The wear and tear upon a sky-scraper are 
quite as astonishing as the other things in connection 
with it. 

Almost all of these high buildings are supplied with the 
conveniences of a city, and one can live in them indefi- 
nitely without going out for food, clothing, or lodging. 
Besides offices, they contain stores, clubs, restaurants, 
bachelor apartments, barber shops, cigar and news stands, 
boot-cleaning establishments, baths, safe-deposit vaults, 
roof gardens — everything except vaudeville, and even 
that is a possibility of the near future. Moreover, each 
one of them contains the inhabitants of a city. In the 
larger ones there are from six to ten thousand tenants; 
and from 50,000 to 100,000 people pass in, or through, 
or up and down them in a single day.^ 

Of course, all the tenants and their thousands of clients 
and customers require gas and electricity, private tele- 
phones, hot and cold water, electric fans in summer, and 
steam heat in winter. The mechanical devices for supply- 
ing these are ingenious to the last degree. For instance, 
in the matter of heat, where so many men have so many 
* The new Whitehall Building promises to surpass even these figures. 



108 THE NEW NEW YORK 

opinions, there is a device in the newer office buildings 
whereby each room is suppHed with a heat indicator, and 
all one needs to do is to turn the pointer to the required 
number, 60, 70, or 80 degrees Fahrenheit, to have the 
heat at that temperature in a few minutes. As for such 
other features of life as meals, messenger boys, cabs, and 
service in general, one touches a button as in a hotel or 
a house. 

If there is one thing above another that makes the sky- 
scraper possible, it is the elevator. Without it the in- 
habitants of the top stories would have to climb the 
mountain each morning, and descend it each evening — 
something no man or superman could or would do. The 
elevator is the central pulsing artery of the whole steel 
structure; and it is a very rapid pulse in the bargain. 
For the first ten stories you move slowly if you get into 
the local elevator stopping at each floor; but, if you are 
bound twenty-five stories up, you travel by the express 
elevator and the first stop is perhaps the eighteenth 
or twentieth floor. You enter the car and when it starts 
perhaps there is a feeling that your stomach is not 
accompanying you, so rapidly does the car get under 
way. When the car stops, it is again so suddenly that you 
feel as though the top of your head were continuing 
the journey without you. When you go down again, the 
top of your head threatens to part company once more; 
but you are landed at the street entrance as softly as 



SKY-SCRAPERS 109 

though borne upon zephyrs and clouds — thanks, perhaps, 
to the air cushion. 

The elevator is indeed the genius of the sky-scraper 
as it is the incarnation of the get-there-quick idea. Rapid 
transit never had a more exemplary exponent. It works 
swiftly, silently, and to all appearances uncomplainingly 
and everlastingly. Each sky-scraper has from six to 
thirty of these shuttles that fly backward and forward, 
taking up and setting down passengers ; and in the course 
of the day carrying many thousands of people. Nothing 
is more amazing to the stranger in down-town New York 
than to see the cool and yet swift way that tenants of the 
high buildings load themselves into these steel cages. 
There is nothing said but "Up" or "Down" by the ele- 
vator boy; and nothing said but "Tenth" or "Thirty- 
Second" or some other floor number, by the passenger; 
but everyone understands, steps lively, shrinks when the 
elevator is crowded, expands when it is empty, and makes 
as little of a nuisance of himself as possible. If it were 
not for this perfect understanding of sky-scraper machinery 
and the recognized ethics of the crowd, there would be 
instant confusion. Such high buildings as the Singer, the 
Park Row, the St. Paul, the Trust Company of America, 
use elevators as a necessity rather than a convenience; 
and there is required some concerted action on the part of 
the passengers to make them successful. 

Not in lower New York alone do the tall buildings 



no THE NEW NEW YORK 

with their swift elevators crop out, though they are more 
concentrated there than elsewhere in the city. All over 
the borough of Manhattan they are to be seen. They 
are not only expedients to utilize extra-valuable real 
estate, but are in themselves cheap and durable buildings 
and ordinarily profitable investments.' The steel skeleton 
is to-day used in almost all the large hotels, apartment 
houses, clubhouses, printing shops, department stores, 
wholesale houses, and even factories. From the Battery 
to Harlem and beyond these tower-like buildings keep 
breaking above the whilom sky line like jonquils above 
the grass of a spring lawn. The parks of the city are 
surrounded by them. Union and Madison squares, with 
the Plaza, are dominated by them, Broadway, dwindling 
away into the north, still has echoes of them ; and Fifth 
Avenue, with its twin pylons, the St. Regis and the 
Gotham, already in place, will soon become a canyon 
like Broad Street or lower Broadway. 

Everywhere they are safe, serviceable, absolutely 
necessary buildings; and it may be added that eventu- 
ally people will find them not wanting in beauty. Just 
now many of them seem to stand like guideposts, showing 
where and how the city is to be built, and what the level 
of its new roofs. Naturally they look out of scale, and 
very much too high when compared with the older 

' The Baltimore fire and the San Francisco earthquake proved the 
steel building far safer and more lasting under storm and stress than 
either brick or stone. 




Pl. 24. — Post Offick and City Hall Park 



SKY-SCRAPERS 111 

buildings; but when the empty spaces in between are 
filled, the Flatiron and the Times Building, with the 
Metropolitan Life and the Plaza Hotel, will not appear 
out of proportion. Tremendous in scale they are, 
certainly ; but then that is the New York that is to be. 



THE NEW CITY 



Pl. VII. — new YORK TIMES BUILDING 



omajiua 23mit >i5{oy whh -.iiv .j'=i 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NEW CITY 

The steel structure has not gone on its way soaring into 
the empyrean without being challenged, criticised, and 
denounced. Every Frenchman that comes to us shrugs 
his shoulders overthe ''skee-scrapaire," and looks unthink- 
able things, though he may say nothing; our English 
friends are usually frank enough to assure us that we are 
architecturally demented ; and even Madame Waddington 
and Mr. James, one-time Americans, return to us after 
many years to tell us that the high buildings are ''hideous." 
That is not the worst of it. Many New Yorkers entirely 
agree with them, and can find nothing good to say of the 
new city. They talk much of the sordid and commercial 
spirit (and there is much to be said against it), they speak 
of the destruction of the old things, — old streets, houses, 
churches, graveyards, — and they hark back a great 
deal to the old city and the good old times. 

They have always done so, in the past as in the present, 
quite ignoring the fact that time was never so old and 
never so good as just now. There has ever been an objec- 
tion to both the innovator and the innovation. People 

115 



116 THE NEW NEW YORK 

become attached to things, to conditions, to environ- 
ments, and they dislike any disturbance of the status quo. 
It is not that the things are necessarily good or bad, but 
that they are, that they exist, and that we have become 
accustomed to them. Instinctively we love the broken 
path, and fall into ways of acting and methods of thinking 
from which we would not be jostled in the name of change 
or variety or progress. Mr. James, returning to New 
York after twenty years, misses what he left when he went 
away, and wonders that the city has changed. During his 
absence he has been accustomed, perhaps, to the streets of 
London, and he is somewhat surprised to find those of 
New York so unlike them. But what came he forth to see, 
a conventional city, a model of regularity, a place where 
people carry on the affair of living as becomes a luxurious 
upper class? Why was it to be supposed that history 
would repeat itself and produce on this continent, under 
entirely different conditions, another Vienna or Paris? 
Why is it that people seek here the Place de la Concorde, or 
the Ringstrasse, or Trafalgar Square? Nothing in our 
history or our social state or our commerce has called for 
such places; and yet, having seen them elsewhere, 
people think them necessary parts of every city and 
marvel that New York lacks them. 

It should be insisted upon again that New York is not 
primarily a place of residence, nor a center of govern- 
ment ; but a city of commerce. In Paris people live over 




joaimstsr^- 



Pl. 25. — Looking down .Madison Avknue 



THE NEW CITY 117 

the shops in the busiest streets of the city ; and, at best, 
the exclusively residential portion along the Champs Ely- 
sees, and in the region of the Arc de Triomphe, is neither 
very extensive nor very far removed from the Boulevard 
des Capucines and the Avenue de I'Opera. Again, the 
Strand and Piccadilly and Mayfair seem to be one, 
and even the Bank district of London is not wholly 
deserted of houses where people live. But not so New 
York. Its people, perhaps unconsciously, recognize 
that it is not a place to live in, and hundreds of thou- 
sands doing business there live out of it, have homes on 
Long Island or in Westchester or over in New Jersey, 
and come to the city each morning and leave it again each 
evening. Even those who stay in town and have homes 
therein try to put as much distance as possible between 
their houses and their offices. Below Canal Street, and 
practically below Union Square on either side of Broad- 
way running south, there are business buildings only. No 
one lives there except care-takers and their families, 
perched upon the roofs of the high buildings, or occupying 
quarters in the basement. The things that make for 
pleasure, for comfort of family or home, for restful scene 
and quiet stroll, are not wanted there ; they would, in fact, 
be in the way and more or less of a hindrance. The lower 
city is a shop or office, is fitted up solely with an eye to 
trade, and is given over wholly to business. 

The residential section of New York has been pushed 



118 THE NEW NEW YORK 

farther north year by year until now, with some excep- 
tions, such as the Washington Square region and its adjoin- 
ing side streets, the southern line is drawn at, say, Twenty- 
Third Street. There is a tendency to gather east and west 
about the Central Park or along the Riverside Drive. 
Of course, on the extreme sides of the lower city, both 
east and west, there are vast tenement-house districts 
thickly populated ; but these are not, in any general 
sense of the phrase, 'Hhe residential portions" of a city. 
Moreover, those things that Mr. James feels the lack of in 
New York, he would not expect to find in the lower quar- 
ters of London or Paris. The slums are not the places 
in any cities that are pointed out as restful or homelike 
or samples of civic beauty. 

Even in the best quarters along the east side of the 
Central Park our French and English friends will find 
nothing that reminds them of the square houses of Hyde 
Park, or the monotonous gray-stones of the Champs 
Elysees. Time was when the streets of upper New York 
wore a dull garment of chocolate-brown, and were as sedate 
and as uniform as the spirit of 1850 was prosaic. But all 
that has largely disappeared with the new era, and in its 
place there are infinitely varied houses of brick, stone, and 
marble. The great wealth of the city is throwing off an 
ornate efl^orescence in itsup-town houses, just as the com- 
mercial wealth of Florence centuries ago reared splendid 
palaces along the Arno; and just as that of Buda-Pesth 




I'l.. 2ti. Mktuoi'ulitan .MrsKiM and Eighty-Second Stkeet 



THE NEW CITY 119 

or Bucharest is doing to-day in its florid rendering of the 
art nouveau. It is picturesque and quite appropriate to 
the commercial center of the western continent; but it is 
not at all like the picturesque of Whistler's London or 
Balzac's Paris. That, it seems, is the chief grievance of 
our critics. The city is not like other cities, therefore it 
must be very bad. '^Hideous" is a word that seems to 
apply exclusively to things modern; and when the old 
things were new things, undoubtedly it was applied to 
them, too. 

A city or a nation in its art should represent itself, — 
its people, its industries, its life, — and should do so 
sincerely and sanely. There could be neither honesty 
nor common sense in erecting the towers of Westminster 
down town in New York, or the Madeleine or St. Peter's 
up town. We already have enough and to spare of these 
imitations. The Giralda tower of the Madison Square 
Garden, for instance, is an attempt to plant the old in the 
new; and yet what purpose does it fulfill? It has at its 
top neither bells nor clock nor muezzin to call to prayer, 
nor at its base any chapel, church, or sanctuary in which to 
pray. Unlike its Seville original it is only ornamental, 
and has not the saving grace of being useful. However, 
it is perhaps justifiable on the plea that it dominates a 
place of amusement and is what it was designed to be, 
''a drawing feature." But how or in what way does it 
represent New York or its people? And what does it 



120 THE NEW NEW YORK 

express in art more than a certain eclectic cleverness in 
its designer? 

On the contrary, the vilified Flatiron, facing on the 
same open square, does represent the commercial spirit 
of New York, whether people like their commercialism 
flung in their faces in that way or not. It stands for com- 
mon sense, and is a very proper utilization of a most 
valuable triangle of ground — one of the most valuable 
in the upper city. And it is not unjust in proportions, 
nor wanting in fine angle lines and sky lines ; while seen 
from upper Fifth Avenue through the mist of evening 
it is a wonder of color, light, and shade. Of course any 
dog can be given a bad name, and the Twenty-Third 
Street building was not improved in public esteem by 
being called a flatiron, nor again by being likened to an 
ocean steamer with all Broadway in tow. But the smile 
and the laugh should not confuse our estimate. The 
Flatiron is a representative New York building; and, 
while making no great ornamental splurge, it fills its 
place admirably, and will be considered not the least 
successful unit in the colossal quadrangle that will some 
day hem in Madison Square. 

The Flatiron and the New York Times Building stand 
apart, each occupying a given space of ground and un- 
related to other buildings by party walls. The street is 
their boundary on every side and they are complete in 
themselves. They do not yet look quite as they should, 



THE NEW CITY 121 

because standing isolated; but, when the adjoining 
blocks and the streets around them are built up with 
sky-scrapers, the relationship will be apparent. Yet 
even in their present surroundings they are seen at a 
better advantage than the majority of the new buildings. 
Many of them rise to twenty stories with only the street 
wall in presentable shape. The other three faces remain, 
as a general thing, in a loose-end condition, waiting for 
the owners on either side to erect structures and thus shut 
out from view raw partitions and unfinished surfaces. It 
is in this condition that people see so many of the down- 
town buildings, and upon the impulse of the moment break 
out in superlatives about the ^^hideousness" of the new 
city. 

This judging of the picture by the half-finished sketch, 
and without sufficient imagination to see the work com- 
pleted, results in many misconceptions. And then, 
again, in such swiftly constructed buildings, planned in a 
month and put up in less than six months, there must be 
necessarily much that is deficient, false, or hopelessly 
bad. It could not be otherwise. And still again, the 
architect has been confronted with new demands, which 
it has been necessary to meet in new ways. There have 
been arbitrary and exacting conditions imposed by the 
financial and architectural phases of the new building — 
conditions that have never arisen before in architecture 
or in building. 



122 THE NEW NEW YORK 

A condition placed upon the sky-scraper at the start 
was that it should rise vertically, for practically its whole 
height, without receding from or protruding over its street 
line. The building laws of the city would not permit of 
the latter, and the value of space would not allow of the 
former. To recede from the line with stories or columns 
or windows, or to taper away at the top in any form, 
would be to lose the very space sought to be gained. 
Of course, the insistence upon the vertical line from 
street to cornice meant an enforced monotony in the wall 
space. How should the architect overcome that diffi- 
culty ? 

Nothing in the architecture of the past seemed of any 
practical service in planning this new building. In 
fact, historic precedent was, and still is, something of a 
stumbling block in sky-scraper construction. The allur- 
ing Greek temple with its waste of space in projecting 
portico and columns, the cathedral with tapering spires 
and towers, the pyramid with receding platforms, were 
not the proper models. Breaking the structure into 
three pieces on the principle of a column, with foundation, 
wall space, and cornice corresponding to base, shaft, and 
capital, again would not answer. Even the campanile 
principle, though pointing the way, was just a little beside 
the mark. The very nature of the structure with its 
space-saving requirements fought all of the old forms. 

Not but what they were tried, and some of them still 



I 






v!, 




Pl. 27. — West Street Building 



THE NEW CITY 123 

in process of trying. Venetian palaces were elongated, 
Roman arches were drawn out of all recognition, Norman 
castles rose to phenomenal heights; but these contorted 
structures were far from satisfactory. The majority of the 
buildings, however, rather held by the three-part principle 
of Roman or Renaissance architecture, with the base, 
shaft, and capital of the column as controlling motives. 
In the average sky-scraper of this latter type one or more 
stories of the basement were heavily constructed or pushed 
out as a foot, a projecting cornice was used to emphasize 
the roof, and the intermediate space was broken with 
ornamental string-courses, bayed windows, high pilasters, 
or columns upholding ox-bowed windows covering several 
floors in height. This was little more than an adding-up 
or a pulling-out of the ordinary four-story building. It 
was, moreover, a strain at holding the building together; 
and, by the use of the horizontal line emphasizing the 
separate stories, it was an attempt to minimize the height. 
In other words, the architect was apologetic about his 
building ; he was trying to make people believe it was not 
such a bridge truss on end, not such a sky-scraper, after 
all. 

This proved something of a mistake, and New York 
learned (or is in process of learning), of its mistake from 
Chicago. The credit of devising a better design belongs 
to the western architects. Instead of deprecating the 
height of the steel building, they emphasized it by using 



124 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the vertical instead of the horizontal line. The foot of 
the building was made only a slight projection, the cornice 
was cut down or changed into a railing or balcony that 
sometimes hid the roof, and the intermediate space was 
broken by climbing pilasters, corresponding in size to 
string-courses or half-round mouldings, that divided the 
windows up and down instead of across. The vertical 
line, instead of fighting the height of the building, 
accented it, gave it aspiration, dignity, and withal light- 
ness and a semblance of honesty — the very things in which 
the first sky-scrapers were lacking. 

The West Street Building, designed by Mr. Cass Gilbert, 
is a good example of the more modern structure using the 
vertical instead of the horizontal line. The effect of it is 
to carry the eye upward, to increase the height; and, 
finally, to allow definition to be lost in a mystery of 
ornamental window caps, cornices, and terra-cotta pin- 
nacles. Perhaps there are too many of the latter in Mr. 
Gilbert's building; but then, ornament has from the 
beginning been something of a snare to the sky-scraper 
architect. If applied just for diversion, it is usually bad. 
There is ordinarily too much of it — too much variety 
as well as quantity — and it is perfectly apparent to the 
passer-by that it is put on merely to break the sameness of 
the fagade. It is good only when it helps out the con- 
struction or the architectural conception. If a series of 
columns, or jutting string-courses, or ribs of stone, or 




1'l. I's. — 8I.NGEK Building — Early Evknixg 



THE NEW CITY 125 

embayed windows can be used with architectural signifi- 
cance, they may be very successful. So, again, there 
may be a proper ornamental filling of space in decorated 
cornices, or sculptured keystones or geometrical ara- 
besques ; but there is always danger lurking in them — 
the danger of destroying solidity and simplicity by too 
much tracery and garnishment. 

There is the possibility of error, too, in the choice of 
stone or terra-cotta or brick or other weather-shield 
material used for the walls. The earlier attempts at 
producing an appearance of solid stone-walls, by deceitful 
veneers of granite or cement pilasters, were never good. 
Just now there is a disposition, or a desire, at least, upon 
the part of the architects, to exploit the airiness of the 
steel structure; but they are at some loss to know just 
how this shall be done. The Eiffel Tower gives the desired 
effect, but it would not make an office building ; it is not 
enclosed. The Singer Building is an enclosed tower, but 
the quantity of glass used to enclose it, perhaps, makes it 
look too fragile. 

Again, in the treatment of the wall space between foot 
and cap there comes to the architect the question of 
color. How can this be employed to break the vertical 
monotony? Can tiles, or terra-cotta, or different-hued 
bricks be used effectively in geometrical patterns? Is it 
desirable or practicable to have the walls painted ? Given 
several hundred feet of upright wall broken only by 



126 THE NEW NEW YORK 

windows and pilasters, and what is to be done with it? 
How shall you make it look attractive and yet dignified ? 

All these questions are asked and answered in an 
individual way about every new steel building that is sent 
up. It has been generally assumed that the builders of 
the sky-scrapers were money-makers pure and simple, — 
men after the dollar and caring nothing for appearances, — 
but such is not the case. They, with their architects and 
engineers, are very much concerned with the sesthetic side, 
and wish their buildings to please the eye from without 
as well as to fill the pocket-book from within. Good form 
with color and ornamentation are things sought for. 
The attempt to produce them, which is apparent in almost 
every high building in the city, is sufficient evidence of 
the desire to have them. Admitting failure with them in 
many cases, and still success in perhaps as many more 
cases, shows that they are possibilities, and that eventu- 
ally they will become established actualities. 

But the worry of the public, and the critics, and our 
returned compatriots, is perhaps centered less on the archi- 
tecture (or its lack) in the new buildings, than on their 
incongruity when seen with the old buildings. They do 
not belong to the same school or style or epoch; they 
break in upon the present arrangement with a disagreeable 
jar. And yet, it is still within the memory of man that 
similar things were said about the tall towers of the 
Brooklyn Bridge. They, too, were once ^'hideous"; 



THE NEW CITY 127 

but gradually as the city has grown up to them they have 
become orderly, contiguous, related, affiliated. Eventu- 
ally, perhaps, the new buildings will not be out of harmony 
with the old, because there will be little of the old left. 

Not that New York is to become an unbroken stretch 
of sky-scrapers. Many of the larger and older structures 
will undoubtedly remain. Not that all the tall buildings 
will be of a size, a style, or a color. There will be as 
great a variety in them as in the buildings they have 
superseded. And just as many inconsistencies along the 
line of contact. Why not? What strange theory of 
civic art taught us that uniformity in buildings made the 
city beautiful? It sometimes makes the dull city, as 
Madrid, for instance ; but it never made the wonder and 
surprise of Buda-Pesth, nor the unique charm of London. 
Variety does not mean necessarily antagonism. The 
Gothic does not clash with the Renaissance except in the 
theory of the partisan advocate. The Piazzeta at Venice 
is one of the most charming spots architecturally in all 
Europe, but what a variety of styles are grouped about 
it — the Byzantine S. Marco, the Gothic Doge's Palace, 
the classic Library of Sansovino, the mediaeval campanile, 
the composite Loggetta ! One by one as these structures 
went up, there were doubtless Venetians who groaned in 
spirit and declared the last addition to be the ruin of the 
city architecturally; but time has proved them wrong. 
There is no incongruity or want of harmony in the group. 



128 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Nor will there be incongruity in the buildings of the 
new New York, save as people for purposes of advertise- 
ment or through absurdity, perpetrate the bizarre or the 
ridiculous. There is, to be sure, a sharp contrast between, 
say, the Metropolitan Life Building with its tall tower on 
Madison Square and the small green-and-yellow version 
of a Roman temple near by that is doing service as a 
Christian church. Both buildings are new and bad 
enough — the one in its want of proportion and its over- 
ornamentation, the other in its mixed imitation of the 
Roman Pantheon and the Kiinstler-Haus at Buda-Pesth. 
The larger one will possibly some day be blurred and 
blended by weathering until it fits in the square and 
meets the structures about it. Nor will the smaller one 
fail as a picturesque foil to its surroundings; but it will 
always be a terra-cotta protest against its marble neigh- 
bor, a green frog railing at a white giraffe. It was put 
forth to attract attention — and it does it. 

But, aside from advertising and fads of fashion, there 
is no reason why different styles of architecture should 
not harmonize with each other ; and this, too, without any 
preconceived plan to meet and match. The idea that a 
square or street or city needs to be exactly scaled and 
designed that its buildings should not quarrel, is the latest 
theory of civic artists ; and, no doubt, if an agreement as to 
style and plan could be reached by all the land-owners of a 
given space, the result might be more uniform. Yet 



THE NEW CITY 129 

there is danger in the exact plan. Such a uniformity with 
monotony is still visible on some of the side streets of 
up-town New York where the old blocks of brown-stone 
fronts remain. Berlin is built somewhat in that style, 
and there are many miles of Paris that are deadly dull 
because wanting in variety. 

But the question is wholly academic. In a demo- 
cratic city like New York people will build as suits their 
individual interests; and after all there is compensation 
in that. The great majority of squares and streets and 
towns — those that we admire to-day — were not planned. 
One thing after another was pushed in to fill a need, first a 
tower, then a church, then a town-hall, or a monument; 
until finally a Piazza del Duomo, a Dresden Theater- 
Platz, or even an English Oxford, was the result. This 
grouping by necessity or for convenience has in the past 
proved quite as good, and even more interesting than the 
rectilinear laying out of a Louvre, or the formal grandeur 
of a Viennese Franzen-Ring. At least the result is not 
stilted, icily regular, splendidly null. It has the ap- 
pearance of something constructed for use, not for looks, 
and it also suggests the story of progress.^ 

The future will no doubt see the same law of use, 

' That there are arguments for the formal city is not questioned. I my- 
self have elsewhere used them. But why not admit that there may be 
arguments for the informal city also ? It is the old contention of the 
classic against the romantic, of form against color. But why not 
beauty in both? 

K 



130 THE NEW NEW YORK 

unconsciously perhaps, producing harmony in the open 
places and the long streets of New York. The tall units 
that, one by one, are being placed in the Plaza, at the 
entrance to the Central Park, will tone down in color, run 
over and intertwine in line, group together as masses, 
until all are but parts of a whole. And it will be the same 
with Madison and Union squares, with Fifth Avenue and 
Broadway. In the lower city the massed effect of the 
high buildings can already be felt. The unity of the new 
city is indicated there for those who have the imagination 
to see it. Unity but not uniformity. There is, and will 
continue to be, the saving grace of variety. 



ANCIENT LANDMAEKS 



Pl. VIII. — the city hall and world building 



OHiajlua ajHow qua jjah ytio 3ht- .iiiv .js 



CHAPTER VIII 

ANCIENT LANDMARKS 

There is still a further objection urged to the sky- 
scraper upbuilding of the new city. It requires a tearing 
down of the old city ; and against that there are always 
voices enough to cry out in protest. Not that there is any 
great value, aesthetic or otherwise, to the old ; but, because 
it has become familiar, and has perhaps some pleasant 
associations connected with it, people would like to see it 
preserved. Then, too, with the passing of the old build- 
ings history loses its landmarks. We can no longer tell 
where Wouter Van Twiller smoked the pipe of peace, or 
Peter Stuyvesant pounded his wooden leg on the floor 
with wrath, or where stood the Collect Pond with the 
island in the middle of it, or where ran the Dutch wall 
from which Wall Street derived its name. Mr. James says 
that on his last visit here he could not even find the 
houses where certain celebrated men — poets, painters, and 
the like — were born, and which he knew as a boy ! He 
thinks the spots should have been marked or commemo- 
rated in some way ; but how could one put a tablet on a 
twenty-story sky-scraper ! 

133 



134 THE NEW NEW YORK 

This protest of history or sentiment has always been 
made in the past as in the present, and has usually been 
unheeded. The world goes right on tearing down and 
building up anew, on the principle that its counting-room 
is only a shop ; that when its machinery wears out or 
becomes inadequate, it shall be superseded by other and 
better machinery ; and when the shop itself becomes too 
small, it shall be torn down and a larger one put in its 
place. Thus acted on occasion the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, and thus act the modern New Yorkers. The 
commercial keynote of New York is again sharply struck. 
The city is a shop, not a historical museum in the large, 
like present-day Venice. Moreover, the past history of 
the city is wholly insignificant when compared with its 
present commercial importance. Its impetus, its move- 
ment forward, are not to be checked by a Fraunce's Tavern 
or a Poe's cottage or even a Washington or Hamilton 
headquarters. If historical buildings are still useful or 
beautiful in themselves, like the City Hall or Old Trinity, 
no one will question the propriety of retaining them ; but 
the fact that tradition attaches to them is not sufficient 
in itself for their preservation. If tradition always had its 
way, the dead past would never bury its dead, and the 
modern city would be a rubbish heap like Bagdad or 
Damascus. 

As it is, the reverence for antiquity has resulted in 
many of the older cities being choked with their own ashes. 




Pl. 29. — TuiMiv C'mKCH Y akd 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 135 

Rome is full of broken-down brick baths, belonging once to 
the Caesars as now to the tourists, that have not one saving 
virtue of use or beauty to commend them. In Florence a 
great wail was sent skyward when modern buildings 
superseded the ancient quarters where heroes and 
heroines of fiction were supposed to have lived — 
quarters which were no better than the old ghetto of 
Rome. And in London, if a radical should suggest a new 
bridge over the Thames to take the place of any one of 
the half-dozen inconvenient and deadly commonplace 
structures that now span the stream, there would be vio- 
lent protests in the name of history and romance from 
Ruskinians and Harrisonians. 

All this seems to the modern who appreciates the 
impossibility of stopping human progress (or change, if the 
word be preferred) a waste of good sentiment and enthusi- 
asm. An object gathers value not for its age, but for its 
use or beauty. The Pantheon, the Palazzo Vecchio at 
Florence, the Ducal Palace at Venice are beautiful, not 
because they are old, but in spite of it ; just as the pictures 
by Titian and Giorgione are the worse for their years rather 
than bettered by them. The idea that everything savor- 
ing of age must of necessity be good is absurd. Yet it is, 
nevertheless, an idea widely entertained. We in America 
have it in almost every household. It is our fancy for 
things ancient, more than for things beautiful, that induces 
us to lift marble mantels from Venetian palaces and to 



136 THE NEW NEW YORK 

place them in Fifth Avenue houses, to hang our walls with 
tapestries from France and pictures from Italy and 
Holland, to cover our floors with Daghestan rugs, and to 
put in our drawing-rooms worm-eaten chairs from Paris 
and Nuremberg. Their inappropriateness in their new 
western setting is glozed over by the statement that they 
are ''very old," — a statement which might, with equal 
pertinence if less interest, be made about any pudding- 
stone from the neighboring hills. 

Naturally, with such notions plaguing our shallow minds, 
there are a plenty of shrill voices to cry out against the tear- 
ing down of a square stone box that happens to have been 
built before the Revolution, though it may have no archi- 
tectural grace about it. Indeed, it is conceivable that a 
future generation may grow lachrymose over the demoli- 
tion of that one-time architectural horror, the New York 
Post-Office. And why not, if age is to be the criterion of 
value? It will soon be one of the oldest of the down- 
town structures, and probably has more romance and 
history about it than all the sky-scrapers put together. 
But originally it never had much reason for existence, 
being neither very useful nor very beautiful; and now it 
is merely an encumbrance that has been kept too long from 
the scrap heap. If a building has any real value in use or 
beauty, there is little difficulty about its being preserved. 

There are very few landmarks down in the busy quarter 
of the town that justify themselves, — that give reason for 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 137 

their continued existence. These few are somewhat Hke 
sunken reefs in the sea with the great wave-hke cornices of 
the sky-scrapers apparently breaking above them, almost 
over them. They are weather-worn, water-worn, doomed 
to destruction; but for the present, perhaps, they serve 
a purpose as beauty, if they are not very useful. Old 
Trinity is one of the most famous of these survivals. With 
its trees and grass and graves, its glint of sunshine and its 
breath of air, it lies like a benediction upon the heart of 
the busy lower city. It is something to please the eye 
and calm the fevered brain, for a moment at least; and 
the thousands of the worried and the harried that push 
and surge along Broadway look through and over the iron 
fence and are helped by the peace and quiet of it. That 
alone is sufficient excuse for its being. Besides, there 
is the beauty of the church itself to lend one for a 
moment a surcease of business and a suggestion of another 
phase of life — something not to be despised in these 
piping times of commerce. 

But Trinity — church and parish school and crumbling 
graves — is submerged, sunken as it were beneath the 
surrounding buildings. It seems and looks a relic not 
destined to last for long. It is already somewhat out of 
place, its congregation do not live within sound of its bells, 
and those that lie under the sod have no longer close 
kindred that walk about the graves after service and keep 
watch over the tombs and the headstones. Broadway 



138 THE NEW NEW YORK 

frets at it; Wall Street bombards it with noisy people; 
Church Street roars at it with elevated trains above and 
lumbering trucks below; and its own corporation puts 
up a lofty sky-scraper to look down upon the cross of the 
steeple. It seems as though they all longed to rush in 
upon it and strangle it. 

Fifty years ago that brown-stone steeple, lifting high 
in the air, dominated all lower New York. It was the one 
tall tower on the island, -and its bells rang out across 
the waters and were heard over in Brooklyn and in New 
Jersey. Then it was an aspiring needle pointing heaven- 
ward and, if it soared far above the commercial buildings 
scattered about its feet, it but symbolized the predomi- 
nance, at that time, of the spiritual over the material. 
It had not then outlived its purpose. Its congregation was 
within call of its bells, its parish school had children to 
educate, it was still a place where people were baptized and 
married and buried. Serene and beautiful and sanctified 
it all seemed, resting there under the blue sky with the 
peace of God upon it. 

But now what ! The old order has changed, giving 
place to new. The church on the green seems like a church 
in an area-way, and the clear sweet bells that once sounded 
over the rivers now reverberate with a clang from the 
high walls about them, or at times have a muffled, strangled 
cry, like that of a bell-buoy overridden by stormy seas. 
The congregation, shrunken to small proportions, comes 




i'l.. ;JU. — St. Paul's and Park Row Building 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 139 

over from Brooklyn by bridge or tunnel, or down from the 
upper town with a rush by elevated or subway. As for 
marriage and burial there, they are now rare occurrences ; 
and the children — the only children left in that part of 
the city — belong to the janitors' families, many of them 
by birth of an alien denomination. 

Alas, fair Trinity ! With all its beauty it is only a 
survival. Its usefulness as a church is gone and it lags 
superfluous on the scene. Everyone will be sorry to see 
it go, for it has been for many years a lovely spot of brown 
and green upon the gray. But commerce is beating upon 
it and wearing it away. Eventually it will succumb. 

One cannot but feel the same way about St. Paul's. 
It was begun in 1764 and completed (all except the steeple) 
in two years. Broadway was not then considered a great 
thoroughfare ; indeed, it was only a lane, and St. Paul's 
turned its back upon it, facing toward the North River. 
There was a fine view then from the simple little porch 
down to a sandy beach, and beyond it bright waves flashing 
in the sunlight; but now the beach has disappeared, the 
river has been much fllled in, and St. Paul's faces the ele- 
vated road and near it office buildings rising in ranks and 
flights upward and outward. Originally it was (is still) a 
chapel of Trinity Church, and was the third church 
building erected by the English in New York, but it is 
now the oldest church structure in the city. Again, it is 
entitled to survive. It is like Trinity, a spot of verdure 



140 THE NEW NEW YORK 

in the waste, and it would be a pity to see it disappear. 
Yet what shall save it ? It was only yesterday that St. 
John's in Varick Street (built in 1803) was threatened 
and then temporarily spared. What shall save St. 
Paul's? 

A little more shut in, a little more protected from 
assault, is the City Hall. The group of county buildings 
at the back, the General Post-Office in front, stand as 
buffers, and the small park about it seems to hold off in- 
vasion year by year ; but the sky-scrapers near at hand — 
the lofty towers of the Park Row Building, the gilded dome 
of the World that repeats the City Hall cupola on a colossal 
scale of impudence, the massive squares and uprights of 
masonry on Broadway — seem to look over and glare at it 
as wondering what it is doing there. And, true enough, 
what does it there ? It is like some fair lady clad in a ball 
dress of pale silk, standing in the dust and dirt of the noisy 
street. It is too delicate, too lovely, too feminine, for 
contact with those great structures of steel and granite. 
To-day, after its recent cleaning, the white marble shows 
an old ivory coloring, and the yellow window-shades 
are as a note of gold upon the ivory. The delicacy of 
proportions in windows, columns, and cupola, the fineness 
of decoration over doors and along string-courses, the 
fastidious simplicity of the wings, are all so marked as to 
create the impression of a casket in ivory. It is not coarse 
enough or bulky enough for such a place. A building 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 141 

of, say, forty stories would not be too big to dominate 
the office structures about the City Hall Park. It is a 
curatorial thought that creeps into one's head in looking 
at the little City Hall — the thought that the whole 
building ought to be picked up and put in some museum. 
Yet worse things than that may happen to it. 

It was not so long ago that this beautiful building 
was erected. McComb, its architect, had completed the 
more robust Queens Building at Rutgers in 1811, and the 
next year the City Hall was finished. The park was then 
the outskirts of the city, and the New Yorkers of that time 
had such small idea of the city's growth to the north that 
the rear walls of the new building were carried up in 
brown-stone instead of marble. It has been said that this 
was economy, and not a question of the extent of the 
future city ; but the fact that all the economy was used on 
the rear wall is significant. McComb and his contempo- 
raries had as little thought that ten miles of solid buildings 
would grow up back of the brown-stone walls as Wouter 
Van Twiller and his Dutch compatriots that their clearing 
in the woods, where cattle were rounded up in the autumn, 
would some day become a park dominated by McComb's 
fine building. 

What swift and sudden transitions ! The changes of 
a hundred years are almost inconceivable. Have we now 
reached the limit of mutation? Are things to stand 
still hereafter and the ivory-hued City Hall to remain 



142 THE NEW NEW YORK 

unchanged, attesting to the future generations the 
sense of proportion, the simple beauty of materials, the 
chasteness of ornamentation, employed by the forefathers ? 
The chances are against it. Why? Because the build- 
ing has outlived its usefulness. It is still occupied, but it 
is not convenient, and its mere beauty is not strong 
enough plea to save it from destruction. It has been 
menaced more than once by political parties in power, 
and eventually it is almost sure to be sacrificed. 

If such a fate should overtake the Aquarium (formerly 
Castle Garden), there would be few mourners. It has no 
beauty about it, and the only thing that is saving it just 
now is its enforced use. It makes a fairly decent building 
for an aquarium, and besides it is isolated in Battery Park 
and no one is crying for the land it occupies. Some asso- 
ciations and traditions cling about it and lend a scrap of 
romance to it. It started into life in 1811 as Fort Clinton 
and was then situated on a tiny island lying off Battery 
Park. In 1822, or thereabouts, it ceased to be a fort and 
was turned into a place of amusement, where Jenny Lind 
first sang when she came to America, and Lafayette and 
Kossuth were publicly received and welcomed. In a few 
years the playhouse had turned into a station for the 
reception of immigrants from the Old World, and in 189G 
it was fitted up as an aquarium. It now houses the finest 
collection of fishes in the world, but it has almost com- 
pletely lost its old character. Instead of covering a tiny 



ANCIENT LANDxMARKS 143 

island it rests bedded in the stone slabs of Battery Park 
and looks somewhat like a half-sunken gas tank. Senti- 
ment may cling about it, and the folk with neither New 
York ancestry nor history may reverence it because it is 
so ''very old"; but in reality it is sad rubbish and has 
little place in the new city. 

There is not a building in lower New York that goes 
back to the time of the Dutch occupation, and very few 
that belong to the later English occupation. The streets 
remain, but their original designers would not recognize 
them, so great has been the change. Tablets commemo- 
rating historic sites have been placed on the new buildings ; 
but, again, those who participated and made the history 
would never know the places thereof. What seventeenth- 
century Dutchman, could he wake up, would recognize in 
the ponderous new Custom House the site of the old Dutch 
fort in New Amsterdam ; or in Beaver Street the beaver 
trail leading over into the marsh now called Broad Street ; 
or in Wall Street the place where the wall to keep out 
invading foes was erected ; or in Broadway the Heere 
Straat, which in 1665 was remarkable for containing 
twenty-one buildings ? The burghers in pot hats and bag 
breeches that wandered along Perel-Straat (Pearl Street) 
when it was the water-line of the East River, and the 
faithful huis-vrouws in balloon skirts that chattered along 
the cow path (Beekman Street) leading through the Beek- 
man farm up to the (City Plall) park would never be 



144 THE NEW NEW YORK 

able to orient themselves in the new New York. The 
Dutch past seems to have been completely wiped off the 
map. 

American antiquity has, at best, some very positive 
limitations. Most of the things we call ''old" are within 
the memory of men still living. The pile of Doric-shaped 
granite on Wall and Broad streets, now doing service as a 
Sub-Treasury, stands where formerly stood the City Hall 
in which Washington was inaugurated first President of 
the Republic. The old building was torn down in 1813 
and later on the present building was erected. No one 
knows how long this one will last. Nothing endures for 
any length of time in this commercial center. The Astor 
House, a granite hotel in the same class as the Sub-Treas- 
ury, is again only ''old" to Americans. It has about 
fifty years, and will probably never see three-score and 
ten. 

A much older hostelry than the Astor House — in fact 
one of the oldest buildings in New York — is Fraunce's 
Tavern, standing on the southwest corner of Broad and 
Pearl streets. It was originally the residence of Etienne 
de Lancey, and was built in 1725. It was the fashionable 
tavern of New York in its day. Here the New York 
Chamber of Commerce was organized in 1768, here Wash- 
ington had his headquarters after the British evacuation 
of New York, and here on December 4, 1783, the great 
captain said farewell to his officers. The building is not 




Pl. 31. — .St. Paul's — Intkuiok 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 145 

"a. wonder and delight" architecturally, not at all in the 
class with Trinity or the City Hall; but it illustrates a 
page of history that all Americans are proud to read. 
In consequence of that, perhaps, and in response to a 
public appeal, the city government tried to buy Fraunce's 
Tavern with the idea of its preservation as a museum; 
but finally, by mutual agreement, the Society of the Sons 
of the Revolution purchased the property and have re- 
stored it. Such a very unworldly, unbusinesslike per- 
formance as that might have been expected of Paris, but 
hardly of New York. Still, everyone seems to acquiesce. 
One hesitates to suggest that the acquiescence is due some- 
what to indifference as well as sentiment. The old tavern 
is removed from the center of business activity. If it 
stood on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, there 
might have been a different tale to tell. 

Perhaps the ''historic mansions" in the upper part of 
the city, along Riverside Drive and the Fort Washington 
district, have survived to the present day for the reason, 
again, that their room is not actively needed. Alexander 
Hamilton's house, "The Grange," near One Hundred and 
Forty-Second Street and Convent Avenue, is one of the 
most notable of those that remain. It was from here 
that Hamilton went forth in the morning of July 11, 
1804, to fight the fatal duel with Aaron Burr. The shadow 
of Burr also fell on the old Jumel mansion, still stand- 
ing on One Hundred and Sixtieth Street ; but before his 



146 THE NEW NEW YORK 

day it held Mrs. Roger Morris, who, as Mary Philipse, 
was the first love of Washington. In 1776 Washington 
made it his headquarters, and from it Nathan Hale sal- 
lied forth to get information within the British lines, and 
never came back. In the Van Cortlandt Park still stands 
the old Van Cortlandt mansion built in 1748, and now 
used as a museum of history by the Colonial Dames. The 
old mills that belonged to the place are there yet (or were 
a few years ago), and the mill-pond is now used by skaters 
in the winter season. 

So one might go on, recounting perhaps a dozen places 
in the upper city that have a century of story attached to 
them of a more or less romantic nature. Interesting, and 
in view of our abbreviated history, a little pathetic, are 
these reminders of the past. The scarcity of them seems 
to emphasize our want of feehng about things historic. 
We appear ruthless, destructive, unsympathetic. And 
yet, after all, what has New York to do with romance or 
the past? The most important page of its biography is 
now open and being written upon. As for sentiment, 
there is plenty of it among New Yorkers, but they are 
indisposed to mix it with business. Sentiment and his- 
tory are in the same category with literature and the arts, 
merely secondary considerations, — things to be cultivated 
like potted plants in factory windows provided they do 
not interfere in any way with the light or the working of 
the machinery. 



ANCIENT LANDMARKS 147 

Harsh facts ! And perhaps better kept in the back- 
ground or at least passed over in silence. And yet why? 
There is nothing discreditable about commercialism/ 
Material prosperity is what the world, in all times and in 
all places, has been struggling for. The necessities of life 
are the prerequisites of the luxuries. No city ever did 
much with art and literature until it had solved the 
fiscal question. And New York simply happens to be a 
better struggler — a better breadwinner — than any of 
its predecessors. One would not care for its prevailing 
idea, its commercial intensity, everywhere and all over 
the United States. Business can be, and has been, done 
to death many times. But why not commerce dominant 
in this city by the sea which is so admirably fitted for that 
very thing? 

^ After writing "The Money God," I shall not be accused of unduly 
favoring commercialism. It has its iniquities, and produces a strange 
mania almost everywhere ; but it also has its necessities and its excellences. 
In " The Money God," I recited the former, and I have no notion of apolo- 
gizing for now reciting the latter. There are two sides to every case. 



THE EBB TIDE 



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CHAPTER IX 

THE EBB TIDE 

Three o'clock is the hour when the heaped-up people 
in the lower city begin to move outward again. That is 
the time when the exchanges close. No more large opera- 
tions can be carried on that day — at least not on the ex- 
changes — and the operators begin to think of going up 
town, or ''out home" in New Jersey or Long Island or 
along the Sound. It is the turn of the tide, and from 
then until six or seven o'clock, the human stream flows 
outward, seeking the places whence it came in the morn- 
ing. The little men — the book-keepers, clerks, mes- 
sengers, and office-boys — are usually the last to go. A 
day does not mean for them from ten to three; and long 
after the presidents, directors, and members of the firm 
have disappeared, the window-frames of lights up in the 
tall buildings show where the clerical force is still at work, 
straightening out the day's books and business. 

The movement outward in the afternoon is substan- 
tially a repetition of the morning movement. The more 
prominent or more wealthy men, to avoid publicity or 
unwished-for companionship or idle curiosity on the part 

151 



152 THE NEW NEW YORK 

of the throng, leave their offices ''hurriedly" (at least they 
always do in newspaper reports) in cabs or automobiles. 
They are "whirled off up town" (according to the news- 
papers again), which means that they frequently join in 
a slow procession up Broadway in the wake of some heavily 
loaded truck that obstructs the thoroughfare. As for the 
rank and file, long platoons of them disappear down 
the side streets toward the ferries or tunnels, hawked at 
and howled at by newsboys, collar-button men, and 
peddlers of oranges and peanuts. Once more the hurry- 
ing throng finds its way around boxes and barrels, circles 
about upright showcases standing on the sidewalk, or 
pitches over steps and iron gratings until finally the 
advance guard disappears in the ferry-houses or tunnel 
entrances. 

Other contingents move in other directions and keep 
disappearing down subway steps, like pieces of coal 
running down a chute. The Broadway cars groan with 
people fore and aft, the elevated stations and trains 
are congested to the danger point, the sidewalks over- 
flow into the street with those who are working along 
toward the Bridge entrance and the cars to Brooklyn. 
For several hours these crowds of people keep coming 
down and out of the tall buildings, as though the supply 
at the fountain-head were inexhaustible. Where they all 
come from is as much of a wonder at night as where they 
all go to is in the morning. 



THE EBB TIDE 153 

What is the need for the ^'rush" at night since 
business is through for the day ? There is nothing ahead 
but dinner and sleep. Why not 'Hake it slowly" ? There 
is only one answer to this. It is not in the American 
make-up to take matters slowly. After business hours 
there are plenty of things to do, and even if they be only 
play things yet must they be done energetically. The 
New Yorker works at his play — drives as hard at his amuse- 
ments or his meals as he might at a new enterprise on the 
exchange. Leisure is a novel word in his vocabulary. He 
will devote as many hours to golf, perhaps, as to work, 
but he will not go about it leisurely unless very old or very 
ill. Up town, down town, or out at the country club the 
game has to be played in a businesslike manner. 

Those who make up the ''rush" at evening all have 
very definite ideas as to why they are rushing. Some are 
going up to the hotels to carry on the same shop talk they 
have just left behind. There are enterprises canvassed, and 
orders taken to sell or buy, in the lobbies of the up-town 
hotels as well as in the offices down town ; and a very 
lively stock business is carried on in West Thirty-Third 
Street after the exchanges on Broad Street have closed 
and sunk into darkness. Some drop into clubs to play 
billiards, or to chat with acquaintances, or to fight a bag, 
or to have a game of squash and get a swim afterward. 
Some, again, are bound for open-air exercise at out-of-town 
clubs, or riding, or driving in the park. A thousand forms 



154 THE NEW NEW YORK 

of amusement, or ways of putting in a couple of hours 
before dinner, offer themselves to different minds. There 
are those, even among busy men, who to oblige wife or 
kindred drop in at teas on the way home, or go to art 
galleries to see pictures, or stop in a library to read some 
new book. Of course, the great body of the clerical force, 
when it gets a chance, scorns all these more effeminate 
forms of enjoyment and goes to the ball game, sits on 
the bleachers, and roars its approbation or displeasure at 
the various players. 

There is still another class, of those living on the island 
and doing business in the lower city, that gets some ra- 
tional enjoyment and exercise out of its late afternoon 
hours. This is the class that walks up town — young 
men of high spirits walking in pairs, middle-aged people 
of full blood in need of exercise, leisurely old men out 
for the air and a stroll. Stick in hand and with eyes 
open for all that passes, they march up past the Astor 
House, look across at MacMonnies' ''Nathan Hale," sniff 
the citified trees in the little park, and feel perhaps some 
civic pride tugging at the buttons of their waistcoat at sight 
of the City Hall. The tumult and the roar of the street 
usually do not bother them. It is remarkable how dead 
the sense of hearing becomes to accustomed sounds. Oc- 
casionally a person drops off into a side street, leaving the 
high buildings and the noise of Broadway behind him; 
but that is not necessarily because of the noise. On the 



THE EBB TIDE 155 

side streets there are unusual sights to be seen. Some of the 
corners and buildings and little parks there seem to have 
slight relation to the things of the great thoroughfares, and 
the people there care nothing about business on the ex- 
changes, and know nothing about the commerce or life of 
the lower city. 

The East Side of the city is an illustration to the point, 
sand its streets and people are interesting to look at if one 
does not mix in too much of the social question with his 
walk. Superficially regarded, the people who dwell there 
seem happy enough. They talk and chatter on the stoops 
while the children play in the gutter, and outwardly there 
is little sign of woe. Then, too, the gay colors in the 
costumes, carts, and shop-fronts lend a liveliness which is 
not exactly a mask. The empty-headed ones really are 
quite content, quite happy. They live in the present, 
taking no thought for the morrow; and, perhaps, have 
never known any different or better life. 

There are dozens of ways by which the East Side may 
be reached, but for the man walking up town after business 
hours the easiest route is by way of Park Row. After 
passing City Hall Park and the newspaper offices, with 
their afternoon crowds, there is a swift change of houses 
and people. A hundred yards beyond the Bridge 
entrance is sufficient to land one in the region of 
pawn shops, cheap clothing-stores, small brick buildings, 
and collarless citizens. The nationality is not here very 



156 THE NEW NEW YORK 

pronounced, but becomes more so as you near Chatham 
Square. Just off the square to the east there is a for- 
lorn-looking scrap of ground on a terrace that may sug- 
gest the dominant race. It is an old Jewish cemetery 
(Beth Haim), and the tablet on the iron gate proclaims it 
the oldest of its kind in New York, it having been pur- 
chased in 1681. It is no longer in use, save as a receptacle 
for rubbish, flung over the fence or from the back windows 
of the tenements that look out upon it. Even its sun- 
light is in measure shut out by the strings of laundry 
that hang high above it almost every day in the week. 
But all the Jews of the quarter are not under its sod. 
Any street now that leads to the east will plunge you at 
once into the ghettos. There are nearly a million Jews 
in New York and it requires no still-hunt to find them. 

But the sights of the ghettos are not exactly pleasure- 
giving, and perhaps a less depressing view of our foreign 
population can be had in the streets west of the Bowery 
and east of Broadway. Turn then to the left at Chatham 
Square and enter Doyers Street. In twenty-five steps 
you are in Chinatown — quite another world. The old 
New York buildings with iron balconies have been trans- 
formed by signs, symbols, and banners into something 
Oriental; the shop windows glitter with Chinese trinkets, 
fabrics, porcelains; and across the way is the one-time 
Barnum Museum, refitted and redecorated to make the 
Chinese Theater of to-day. The curved street has its quota 



THE EBB TIDE 157 

of celestials, standing in store fronts, loitering along the side- 
walks, or chatting with one another — almost all of them 
in native costumes. Behind the doors and windows you 
get an occasional glimpse of Chinese wives and mothers; 
and in the doorways there are Chinese babies playing on 
the floor. 

Chinatown is a small but rather exclusive little spot, 
embracing Doyers, Pell, and the lower end of Mott streets 
— only two or three blocks. There one has a whole city 
in miniature — Chinese hotels, restaurants, shops, offices, 
banks, ''joints," what you will. The Chinese are quite 
undisturbed in their possession, save by the Italians who 
crowd in upon them and, in measure, live with them. The 
Italians are about the only neighboring nationality that will 
do this. The Jews are close at hand but will not affili- 
ate. They hold aloof. Nevertheless all three nationalities 
touch elbows as you move up Mott Street and come to 
Bayard Street. The Italians now dominate, though 
Chinamen are seen ; but the Jews hold the end of the next 
parallel street to Mott (Elizabeth), and crowd through 
Bayard toward Mott. In fact, the foot of Elizabeth Street 
is the great East Side clothing market of the Jews. There 
trousers and coat brokers, with goods upon their arms, 
move along the streets and make sales in the saloons, which 
are the chief exchanges. The modest charge of the saloon 
is that after each sale the seller must buy a drink. A 
thriving business is thus done by all parties concerned; 



158 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and the clothing curb is in consequence a lively and a much- 
sought place. 

But the Jews stop at the junction- of Bayard Street 
with Mott. The upper part of Mott for many blocks is 
sacred to the Italians, as is also Elizabeth Street. Here 
one finds a repetition of the poorer quarters of Naples, 
with crowded tenements, hundreds of men and women, 
thousands of children. And hereabouts everything rings 
with color. Doyers and Pell streets are gay, but Mott 
Street is "loud," Especially is this true when there is a 
celebration of some saint's day, say, that of Saint Michael 
the Archangel. Then there will be a huge baldachino in 
gold and colors erected in front of some building, with 
awnings above and effigies of the Madonna and Child be- 
low; there will be a procession, with a band playing Ital- 
ian airs, and rows of fire-crackers for many blocks that 
run up and explode with a tremendous blast in front of 
the Madonna; there will be prayers and ceremonies and 
goings-on for, perhaps, days at a time. During these 
celebrations all the doorsteps, windows, and balconies 
for blocks are thronged with people in bright dresses; 
there are flags and banners and festoonings in many colors ; 
the curb below is lined with push carts showing brilliant- 
hued fruits, vegetables, or dry-goods; while scarlet and 
violet and saffron shawls and shirts go by in bands and 
bunches. The color is more astonishing than Naples 
itself. 




I'u.sT Office fkom >St. Paul's Pouch 



THE EBB TIDE 159 

One emerges from Mott Street with his impressions 
somewhat confused. It is a strange tangle of people, 
shops, signs, carts; and yet out of it all comes perhaps a 
vivid recollection of a quaint old New York doorway with 
fluted wooden columns and a wrought-iron railing to the 
stoop, or a fine old church with square tower and heavy 
stone-walls now being occupied by possibly two or three 
congregations of foreign extraction, or a new schoolhouse 
of excellent architecture and superb proportions put down 
here by the municipality to educate the children of these 
Italians in American ways. It is difficult, indeed, to real- 
ize that this is New York, so contradictory seems the scene, 
so unbelievable the mixture of the old and the new. 

If one turns at the top of Mott Street through Houston 
Street to the east, crossing the Bowery to Second Avenue, 
he finds himself in the midst of another nationality, and 
surrounded by entirely different associations. It is the 
quarter of the Hungarians ; and their shops, amusement 
halls, and houses are scattered hereabouts. It is a much 
better quarter than Mott Street — in fact, with its bal- 
conies and music, its cafes with potted shrubs and bits of 
grass, its houses with flowers on the window-sills and vines 
on the walls, it is very attractive. There is some re- 
minder here of a Paris boulevard of the second class. 
Perhaps this is due to the presence of the ^'kave-haz" 
at every turn. The populace are devoted to the caf6 
with its sidewalk tables, and if one visits such a place as 



160 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the Cosmopolitan, he may fancy that all Hungary in 
America is devoted to chess, for it is played there all day 
and most of the night. 

But here, again, on Second Avenue is the strange min- 
gling of the old and the new. Hidden within the block 
of Second and Third streets on the west side of the avenue, 
with access to it cut off save by a grated passageway, lies 
the quiet and beautiful Marble Cemetery, which few people 
to-day ever see or hear about. It is a part of old New 
York, a chapter that is now closed and sealed and prac- 
tically forgotten. Not half a block away, on the north 
side of Second Street moving toward First Avenue, is a 
larger Marble Cemetery, exposed to the street yet guarded 
by an iron fence — another quiet and beautiful spot of 
green, surrounded by tenements, crowded by newcomers, 
and yet holding under its sod some of the people of old 
New York, Robert Lenox, Thomas Addis Emmet, and 
their contemporaries. In the midst of a roar and a rabble, 
in an overcrowded section of the city, these clean and 
well-kept cemeteries not only please the eye, but impress 
one strangely by their unruffled calm, their abiding peace. 

Something of the same feeling is produced by old St. 
Mark's at Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Street. The 
square brown church with its simple lines of roof and 
steeple, its fine porch and entrance, its green grass and 
(for New York) ample grounds, is very impressive, almost 
startling. Such things do not occur often in the city, and 




Pl. 34. — MoTT Street 



THE EBB TIDE 161 

it is fortunate that St. Mark's still endures with its feel- 
ing of restfulness here in the troubled street by the noisy 
tenements. Counting by the new world calendar the 
church has stood for a long time. It is old — several gen- 
erations old. On its site Peter Stuyvesant, last governor 
of New Amsterdam, caused to be built a chapel for the 
use of his neighbors and himself, who were living near 
by on their "bouweries." The chapel was in use in 
1660; and in 1682 Stuyvesant died, and was buried in a 
vault beneath it. Afterwards the chapel was pulled down 
and in its place arose the present St. Mark's. This was 
finished in 1799, though the steeple was not completed 
until 1826. Stuyvesant's ashes are still under the church ; 
while under the flat slabs on the green without are a num- 
ber of colonial governors and other notables of revolution- 
ary New York, 

Further up Second Avenue one comes to Stuyvesant 
Square, lying on either side of the street, and still pos- 
sessing some large trees, some last-century houses, and the 
substantial Friends' Meeting House, with its suggestion of 
Philadelphia in the red brick and white-marble trimmings. 
This is a delightful portion of the old town, but one that, 
unfortunately, is no longer occupied by old New York 
families. With a few exceptions they have moved out 
and left the park to the new East Sider. The reason 
given is that access to it is now attainable only by passing 
through disagreeable streets and quarters. In this re- 



162 THE NEW NEW YORK 

spect Gramercy Park, lying a few blocks to the northwest, 
is better off. It still retains many fine houses, and it 
also keeps an air of tranquillity quite unshaken by the 
city's roar. 

From Gramercy Park the transition to more familiar 
streets is quickly made. Broadway and Madison Square 
with the upper avenues are near at hand ; and perhaps 
the pedestrian thanks the Deity under his breath that 
there are upper avenues. Charity worker or philanthro- 
pist though he may imagine himself, he usually has small 
desire to live in Mott or Bayard Street. The problem of 
congestion in the tenement district is one that he will help 
solve with purse or pen or voice, but at a reasonable dis- 
tance. Settlement work is not to every New Yorker's 
fancy. 

There is another walk up the East Side for those who 
prefer to see the city without so much admixture of the 
ghetto or ''Little Italy." It is by way of Center Street 
from the City Hall. This takes one through a district 
fast building up with sky-scrapers. The new Municipal 
Building is in course of construction at the right ; and there 
are great structures of a forbidding nature on the left, 
designed no doubt with their sculpture to be ''Renais- 
sance" in style, but are instead only huge conglomerations 
of stone. Farther on the new Tombs in gray stone, with 
the suggestion of a mediceval French prison in its roof and 
towers, is more interesting to the artistic; and the little 




. ■^',i»: ^-^'-'^'t^ 



tv 




1*1,. ;j."). - The Xkw 'IOmus, (in ri.u .-^ri;!.!:!' 



THE EBB TIDE 163 

prisoner's bridge that runs from it across the street to the 
Criminal Court Building is doubtless more harrowing to 
the morbid. 

Just beyond the Criminal Court Building, on the corner 
of White and Lafayette streets, stands a striking illustra- 
tion of our architectural borrowings. It is a miniature 
French chateau doing service as a fire engine house ! The 
amusing as well as amazing part of it is that it answers 
its purpose very well, and even looks quite charming 
planted there on the curb under the shadow of the heavy 
Court Building. English, in suggestion at least, is the 
new Police Headquarters at Grand Street. It suffers 
somewhat, as any such domed building must, by being 
too much shut in by other buildings. There is little op- 
portunity to see it in its entirety, to study its proportions. 
It is right enough as architecture, but does not belong on 
the watermelon slice of ground allotted to it. 

Moving as straight up town as the now divergent street 
will allow brings one once more in contact with tenement 
quarters and congested populations. They soon disappear, 
however, as one passes across Bleecker Street into the re- 
gion of Great Jones Street and Lafayette Place. Here 
the walker may, if so disposed, pass straight across the 
city to what was once Greenwich Village by practically 
the same route that New Yorkers traveled a hundred 
years ago. What is now the Bowery was the main road 
leading out of lower New York, and at the present Astor 



164 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Place there was a branch road leading over to Greenwich. 
The line of it to-day may be only guessed at, but undoubt- 
edly it led directly past Washington Square — originally 
a marsh where the Dutch shot ducks, and afterward a 
pauper burying-ground. When the branch road became 
a fashionable drive, the smart folk of the day objected to 
the presence of the burying-gound and it was moved 
farther away to what is now Bryant Park. Not until 
1827 was the land laid out as a park and called Wash- 
ington Square, and not until some years later was the 
dignified row of brick and marble residences on the north 
side built. From the square onward the route was prob- 
ably by Waverly Place, and from thence into the Monu- 
ment Lane of history but no longer of fact. To-day one 
goes up Waverly or down Christopher Street, and either 
thoroughfare soon lands him in the middle of what was 
once Greenwich Village. 

Greenwich is one of the very oldest places on the island 
of Manhattan. At first it was an Indian village, called 
Sapokanican, and was probably near the present site of 
Ganscvoort Market. The Dutch governor, W^outer Van 
Twiller, coveted it, and finally secured it as a tobacco 
farm. The farmhouse he built upon it, as Mr. Janvier 
tells us,^ was the first building erected outside of the Fort 
Amsterdam region, and practically the beginning of Green- 
wich. The village had an uneventful history under the 

' Janvier, In Old New York, p. 85. 




#/ii 








H 


t 


'■ ' ^ 


j|»:' 


•11 r, 


' 


^- j^ 




Pl. 30. (illACE CllUKCH, BuOAOWAV 



THE EBB TIDE 165 

Dutch, and when it passed to the Enghsh it had a subur- 
ban character for many years. It was a place where the 
Warrens, the Bayards, and the De Lanceys had country 
homes. The building up of it was a gradual affair. It 
was of some proportions when in 1811 the City Plan, 
whereby New York was cut up into checkerboard 
"blocks," came into existence. The new plan jostled 
the rambling nature of Greenwich to the breaking point, 
and yet left some of its quarter-circle and corkscrew 
streets sufficiently intact for the people of the middle 
nineteenth century to build substantial dwellings along 
them. These streets with their red-brick buildings remain 
to us and make up perhaps the most picturesque glimpse 
of old New York that we have. Along them one sees 
scattered here and there the gable-windowed wooden 
houses of an earlier period, with a quaint St. Luke's 
Chapel, or a scrap of a park, or trees and vines and 
garden walls that now look strange in the great city. 

But Greenwich Village is one of the fast-disappearing 
features of the town. And here again the contrast 
is presented. Above the gambrel roofs of the past are 
lifting enormous sky-scraping factories and warehouses, 
the traffic from the ocean-liners rattles through the streets, 
the Ninth Avenue Elevated roars overhead. St. Luke's 
Park (or, as it is now called, Hudson Park) has been re- 
modeled into a sunken water-garden with handsome 
Italian-looking loggias that make one gasp when seen 



166 THE NEW NEW YORK 

against the old brick residences on either side of it. Abing- 
don Square (named for the Earl of Abingdon, who married 
one of the Warrens, and thus came into possession of many 
acres in Greenwich) has only its name left to suggest a 
connection with history. Everywhere the new is crowding 
out the old ; and before long Greenwich, where many an 
old-time New York family made the money that carried it 
up to a brown-stone front on Fifth Avenue, will be merely 
a tradition. 

It is a comparatively clean portion of the town, this 
Greenwich district, though now a foreign population is 
crowding in upon it to its detriment. A walk there is 
entertaining and, in some of the streets, quite astonishing, 
not alone for what one sees, but for what one does not hear. 
In spots there is an unwonted silence, as though one were 
in some country village. Up Washington Street and up 
Tenth Avenue there are scraps of this silence to be found 
about old houses, old walls, old trees. At Twentieth 
Street the extensive grounds of the General Theological 
Seminary (formerly called Chelsea Square), with their 
commanding buildings, seem to emphasize the stillness; 
but at the much traveled Twenty-Third Street it is lost 
in the roar of trucks and trolleys. 

Unfortunately, perhaps, the average man who walks 
up town in the afternoon takes none of these strolls — 
neither to the east nor to the west. He bolts up Broad- 
way with the mob, pushing his way along the sidewalks, 



THE EBB TIDE 167 

dodging trucks from the side streets, breathing dust and 
smoke from all streets, and apparently seeing nothing, 
not even his fellow-pedestrians. With some fine scheme 
in his head (a pot of money its ultimate outcome), he 
looks at passing buildings, lights, and colors, but receives 
no impression from them. He is out for bodily exercise 
and thinks he is getting it, but knows no reason why he 
should not work his head in another direction at the same 
time. The charm of Grace Church is lost upon him ; and 
Union Square appears to him only as a place where there 
are some trees, park benches, and dirty-looking people 
seated on the benches reading yellow-looking newspapers. 
At Madison Square perhaps he begins to take notice ; but 
not of Saint Gaudens' "Farragut," nor the trees, nor the 
revel of color all about. He squints an eye at the present 
condition of the newest ascending sky-scraper; he takes 
a look at a new turn-out or automobile, or looks over the 
crowd for chance acquaintances, for he is in the shopping 
district and there are many smartly dressed men and 
women in the throng. In short, up town has been reached, 
and life once more begins for him. 

He takes no violent interest in the past — this average 
Broadway walker. Apparently all that he knows of 
happiness lies in that word. To-day. Yesterday has so 
completely vanished, has been so thoroughly swept-up 
and carted away, that the record seems like a blank to him. 
Was it Philip Hone who declared many years ago that New 



168 THE NEW NEW YORK 

York was being rebuilt every ten years ? At any rate the 
statement had some truth in it in his day, and is perhaps 
even truer now. The past is quickly obliterated by the 
present. New York is nothing, if not modern. And its 
average citizen prides himself upon being up to the day, 
if not ahead of it. 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 



PL. X. FIFTH AVENUE THROUGH THE WASHINGTON ARCH 



HD^A H0T0H1H2AW ^Hl HuUOHHT 3UM3VA HnR .X .jS 



CHAPTER X 

FIFTH AVENUE AT FOtJR 

The throng of people, derived from many sources, that 
comes up Broadway in the afternoon, begins to disin- 
tegrate at Twenty-Third Street. The greater part of it is 
shunted over diagonally upon Fifth Avenue — apparently 
pushed over by the stout policeman who stands in the 
center of the street and holds out a commanding left hand 
at the cabs and a compelling right hand at the crossing 
crowd. There it joins with the throng coming up Fifth 
Avenue, and the united force, with some interlocking 
and side-stepping, moves on past the new Fifth Avenue 
Building, and then divides. Half of it goes on into the 
theater region of Broadway, and the other half crosses 
and continues up the avenue. It is toward Fifth Avenue 
that those who walk up town usually turn. The reason 
is obvious enough. It is the most interesting of all the 
New York streets, especially in the afternoon, when people 
are out driving, or are moving rapidly along the side- 
walks for exercise or shopping. 

It is a wonderful crowd that pours along Fifth Avenue 
in the late afternoon — wonderful in the sense that you 

171 



172 THE NEW NEW YORK 

really do wonder who they are and where they all come 
from. It is different from the lower Broadway crowd in 
that more than half of it is made up of women and children, 
and even the male portion of it shows a different type 
from those who buy and sell on the exchanges. Many of 
the people here are in business, too; but it is a retail 
affair, and has to do with shops and shopping. With 
these up-town business men are mingled many customers 
from without, or retired gentlemen from the clubs or 
residence districts, or people with more time than money 
who wander about the streets for amusement. As for 
the women, they are more difficult to place and pigeon- 
hole. Some represent society and fashion from the draw- 
ing-rooms, some represent maids from the nursery and the 
back stairs, many are from out of town, many are just out 
of school, not a few belong to the neighboring shops. 
Aside from the men and women who are more or less 
native to New York, aside from people of business or 
leisure, there is always a great host of strangers on parade. 
From Maine to California, from China to Peru, from 
Teheran to London, they gather, gather, gather, on Fifth 
Avenue. It is truly a wonderful throng. It is more 
cosmopolitan, more stirred and intermixed, than any 
seen in Paris or Cairo or Hong-Kong — a gathering inter- 
national in blood, if not in name. 

That statement would seem to arrogate much im- 
portance, much world-interest attaching to New York; 




Pl. 37. — FiiTH Avenue at Thikty-Foukth Stkkf.t 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 173 

but, on the contrary, it is merely meant to suggest the 
very apparent blend of races. In London or Berlin or 
Rome one meets on the promenades a passing people 
that is positively English, German, or Italian, so far as the 
type is concerned. But not so in New York. The Ameri- 
can type is there to those who have been long enough in 
the country to see it ; but it does not predominate. And 
there are many varieties of it, many blends of it, looking 
so much like the original that they are confusing. Four 
schoolgirls coming down the street may all walk and talk 
and giggle alike, and have dresses that are made by the 
same dressmaker; they may even look alike in general 
resemblance one to another, but the dark eyes of one may 
hark back to an Italian grandfather, the light hair of 
another to a Germanic origin, the tall figure of the third 
to English ancestry. If the fourth girl happens to be an 
American unto the ninth generation, she will, even then, 
hardly be more than a variety peculiar to a section of the 
country. The Boston, the New York, and the Baltimore 
girls have distinct individualities of their own; and the 
great west in the last fifty years has developed still another 
personality vaguely called 'Hhe western girl." A com- 
posite photograph of them all would no doubt reveal some- 
thing looking like the average graduate of Wellesley or 
Smith College ; and yet that in itself would prove nothing, 
would fail to fix the American type or make it recognizable. 
The type is, indeed, elusive; which is to say that it 



174 THE NEW NEW YORK 

is not one formula that we see in the moving throng but 
a thousand, not one distinct face but faces reminiscent 
of the whole white race. The giggling schoolgirls may 
remind you only of schoolgirls, but the dark-haired, dark- 
eyed young woman with the sharp profile behind them 
makes you think of Bucharest and Rumanian types, or 
possibly Moscow and Russian Jewesses. The dandified 
young man with her who carries a club-cane for arm 
exercise, and wears spats on his shoes, and has a very 
high shirt-collar, looks as though he might be a Dane or a 
Swede. Yet you are not greatly surprised to find them 
both talking English in a way that shows them born in 
America. A group of students from Columbia University 
has the same variety. It is not that a Brazilian, a Japa- 
nese, a Russian, or an Italian mingles with the group, — 
that is a common enough sight here or elsewhere, — but 
somehow a tang of Brazil, Russia, or Japan seems in the 
blood and in the faces of our so-called native-born Amer- 
icans. The result is a masque difficult to penetrate, a 
riddle hard to answer; and yet a mystery that has its 
interest. 

Is it true then that the American people is so inter- 
married and interbred that the parent stock is no longer to 
be found? Not exactly. New York is New York, and, 
racially, it does not stand for the whole United States. 
On the street — on Fifth Avenue in the afternoon — 
the crowd does not even represent the New Yorkers. 




Pl. 3.S. — 8t. r.\TKK k's Cathedral fkom Madison Avkm k 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 175 

Ask yourself, if you will, how many in all that hurrying 
mixture of folk, charging in corporals' guards up and down 
the sidewalks, were born here in the city. You know 
that not one in ten can claim such birth. Nearly a 
quarter of the whole present population is Jewish, which 
gives a hint as to what the total foreign population may 
be. As for the Americans within the city, think of the 
thousands who have struck it rich or poor in Michigan 
or Texas or Montana, and have come to New York to 
spend or win money; of the hundreds of thousands from 
all over America who have drifted here for one reason 
or another. The throng is in New York, of New York, 
and it practically makes New York, without being native- 
born, or typical of the city proper, or of the country at 
large. 

What then does this mob in the street really stand for ? 
Nothing that can be told in a sentence. It is a flux, an 
uneven mingling of many elements, a quantity with 
value, purpose, and destiny as yet quite undetermined. 
Our foreign friends who come to us from time to time and 
go home to write us up in the magazines, have neither 
difficulty nor hesitancy in telling us just what it means, 
and assuring us that we are all going to glory or the other 
way, as the case may be ; but the New Yorker who has 
had the phenomenon under observation all his life is 
frank to confess that he does not know what will come 
out of it. The careless stranger in Gotham who strolls 



176 THE NEW NEW YORK 

along the streets is perhaps more rational than either of 
them, and, in consequence, is more happy. He does not 
bother with the problem at all. He is content to see 
humanity, male and female after its kind, file by, and 
to be interested in it largely as a curiosity. That is the 
easier, if not the more intelligent, way. 

Costume is often a badge of nationality where the face 
is a mystery, yet it is not frequently in evidence. Oc- 
casionally a Turk, or a Persian, or a high-class Chinaman 
moves along Fifth Avenue in native dress, with native dig- 
nity ; but the great throng is usually inconspicuous in that 
respect — dressing decently, sometimes extravagantly, 
and almost always picturesquely, but in the prevailing 
American or European style. The men cling to blacks and 
grays and browns, whereas the women often appear in 
brilliant colors, especially in the spring of the year, at the 
Easter season. That most of those seen in lively colors 
belong to the shop-girl and domestic circles does not de- 
tract in the least from the color effect of the avenue. 
Those who count themselves in society and leaders of 
fashion sometimes dress just as extravagantly, but they 
do not show themselves on the sidewalk on Easter Sunday. 

The mixture of nationalities, if responsible for the 
types that one meets on the avenue, is also, in a sec- 
ondary sense, responsible for the varied coloring. Cer- 
tainly there is great variety, and the stroller who is out 
for color, local or otherwise, finds enough to bewilder 







»S'L"*' -5'- 



"UiiriU 



^f \ 
















Pl. 39. — I'l'i'KK Fifth Avknue 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 177 

him. Group succeeds group hurrying by, and no two of 
them quite alike in any respect. Girls, troops of girls, in 
grays, in browns, in blues, greens, pinks, and mauves, 
quite unconscious of everything but their own talk; 
old women in silks and bombazines, with querying 
glances up, around, and about ; butlers and haberdashery 
clerks and men-milliners somewhat puffed up with their 
own importance, trying to assume the blazing ties and 
swagger airs of their masters or patrons; old clubmen 
with white waistcoats and top hats; fat people with 
apoplectic faces; shopkeepers and agents and salesmen 
in stripes and checks ; churchmen in clerical garb ; nuns 
in black ; emigrants in caps, staring round them with a wild 
surmise, — all move and intermingle in the currents. And 
with them, pushing against them, running into them, are 
children and maids and baby carriages in fluffy colors, 
messenger boys, telegraph boys, newsboys, bundle carriers, 
smart youths with Boston terriers, peddlers with arms 
full of puppies, and sometimes schoolboys on roller skates 
to add to the confusion and the consternation. 

With all its "tackle trim and sailing free," in exalted 
spirits and by no means to be snubbed or subjected to 
indignities, it is, nevertheless, a good-natured throng like 
its down-town prototype. It seldom complains. Cabs 
and automobiles threaten its heels or toes as they cut 
through into the side streets, but the crowd merely dodges 
and swerves ; brusque young men, walking rapidly, push 



178 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ahead and flourish sticks or umbrellas close to following 
faces, but there is no protest ; platforms are mounted and 
descended over new construction work, and the whole 
moving mass may be shunted into the street and around 
an excavation or a mass of heavy stone or iron being 
hoisted aloft, but nothing is said. Not even the snow and 
mud and water on the cross-walks in winter bring forth 
more than a mild protest. For a people easily excited, 
and sometimes given to violent punishments for minor 
offenses, it certainly keeps its temper well. 

The street from gutter to gutter is just as full of 
vehicles as the sidewalks are of moving people. And the 
same variety rules, the same wonderment is excited in 
the one as in the other. Carriages of all sorts crowd along 
in processional line. Victorias, landaus, broughams, road 
wagons, occasionally an old-fashioned ''buggy," mingle 
with motor-buses, cruising cabs, countless makes and 
colors of automobiles, delivery wagons, express wagons, 
furniture vans, short-haul trucks, motor-cycles, ordinary 
bicycles. Policemen, mounted or standing, are in the 
center of crowded cross-streets to hold up the line of car- 
riages for a moment and allow a stream of foot-passen- 
gers to pass over; but as a rule everyone does his own 
scrambling, keeps from under the horses' feet, and gets 
about or across as best he can. The cabs pay little 
attention to foot-passengers, and the automobiles pay still 
less. They all move as fast as the police will allow, and 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 179 

sometimes a little faster. The mounted police occasionally 
stop motor-cars in other places, but not frequently on 
Fifth Avenue. The congestion of travel there in the 
afternoon does not admit of speeding; and besides, a 
certain amount of hurry is recognized as a necessary evil. 

It is usually a more well-to-do class of people seated 
in the carriages and cabs than walks upon the sidewalk, 
and perhaps it represents fashion or society better, since 
neither of, them cares much for going about on foot in 
New York. But it is not more American than the class 
on the sidewalk, and it may not be any better bred or 
better born. It is gay-looking, however, and makes quite 
an impression. Automobiles, driven perhaps by stout, 
red-faced men with handsome, overdressed, rather flashy 
young women on the back seat; victorias with elderly 
people in black; broughams with single occupants, and 
the men on the box dressed up to the color of their 
horses' coats; hansoms and auto-cabs with young people 
leaning on the closed doors; omnibuses with top-loads 
of passengers; huge cars with a crowd of out-of-towners 
stretching their necks, ''seeing New York," and having 
misinformation shouted at them through megaphones 
at the same time; four-in-hands with blowing horns 
and guests on the seats that try to look indifferent, as 
though long accustomed to coaching; vehicles, big and 
little, conspicuous and inconspicuous, very smart and 
very shabby, all sweep along in line, up or down the 



180 THE NEW NEW YORK 

avenue, the occupants bowing to acquaintances, talking 
to one another, giving orders to the footman, stopping to 
run into shops, full of energy, full of life, apparently 
happy, as though living were a joy. Occasionally the 
carriages huddle up along the curbs and stand still to let 
a fire engine or a hospital ambulance rush by, which in- 
timates to them that there is some unhappiness in the 
world ; but the faces are sober for only a moment. People 
on Fifth Avenue are more or less on parade, and what- 
ever their griefs or sorrows this is not the place to give 
them voice or look. 

It seems an unending, interminable crowd that moves 
by foot and horse and automobile along the avenue in the 
afternoon. The men go down town in the morning and 
the women are left at home to their own devices. They 
manage to worry through the early hours in domestic or 
social duties, but by the afternoon they must get out, 
must have air. Many of them seek it on the avenue en 
route to the Central Park, perhaps stopping to shop or call 
on the way. They are met on the avenue by the busy 
and the idle of the other sex, and added to by children and 
nurses, by simple young folk of fashion, by clerks and 
messengers and touts, by shopmen and agents and travel- 
ers and foreigners. Hence the great crowd and its in- 
finite varieties. 

Hence also some of the great noise that wells up from 
the street and reverberates along the walls of the high 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 181 

buildings. There is no limit placed upon individual li- 
cense in this respect, and the havoc that is wrought among 
people with highly strung nerves is not to be calculated. 
It seems something of an American habit to make as 
much noise as possible. Engines, tugs, steamboats, 
motor-cars, trolleys, bicycles, ambulances, all carry gongs 
or whistles and ring or blow them like mad on the slight- 
est provocation. There never was an evil crying so loudly 
for reform as this. One has small patience with it because 
so much of it is unnecessary. 

And the automobile atmosphere ! — the smoke arising 
from the laziness or carelessness of chauffeurs, and the dust 
from the constant friction of travel ! Much of this is 
again unnecessary, and warrants a certain amount of bad 
temper on the part of those living along the avenue. If 
there is one person more than another in this year of 
grace who needs to feel the strong arm of the law, it is the 
careless and speed-mad automobile driver. The smoke 
that afflicts Fifth Avenue is of his manufacture, and 
there is no need for it. The cities of Europe do not have 
it ; they would not allow it. So, too, the matter of dust 
might be remedied by proper street-sprinkling, though 
there is difficulty in this, because the water freezes on the 
asphalt in winter and makes traffic dangerous. Still, the 
patience of the long-suffering people keeps such abuses 
alive. It tolerates intolerance and apparently acquiesces 
in lawless liberty. 



182 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The background that this noise reverberates from, 
that this dust and smoke keep hiding and revealing, that 
these people and carriages and horses and flunkies and 
foot-passengers are cast upon, is novel enough, perhaps 
unique in the world's history. Fifth Avenue is said, with 
some ostentation, to represent more wealth than any 
other street in the world. The statement is trite, and 
has small value for us. It formerly meant that those who 
owned the residences around Murray Hill were the richest 
people in the world; but many of those residences have 
been abandoned, the people have gone farther up town, 
and Fifth Avenue, below Fifty-Ninth Street, is fast 
turning into a street of shops. It is the background of 
shops, hotels, and residences, mingling and running 
together, that really seems unique. 

The cause of the mixture is not far to seek. The shops 
follow the hotels and, to some extent, subsist upon them. 
Wherever the hotel guests are quartered there are the 
eagles gathered together. Naturally there is a lively 
demand for rentable buildings about Thirtieth and Thirty- 
Fourth streets. Every hall bedroom or crack in the wall 
in that locality is a valuable asset and rents as an office 
or at least a showcase. Trade also follows the fashionable 
residence district. Ten years ago this district lay on the 
west side of the city, but since then it has been shifted 
to the east side. The better class of shops no longer 
follow Broadway but Fifth Avenue, overflowing on the 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 183 

side streets in small concerns that cannot pay the heavy 
rentals of the avenue itself. What the avenue is destined 
to become everyone knows since the Altman store was 
erected between Thirty-Fourth and Thirty-Fifth streets. 
The Tiffany and Gorham buildings, and the sky-scrapers 
that are going up in their neighborhood, merely carry 
out the Altman idea that Fifth Avenue below the park is 
no longer a street of residences, but a place where a vast 
retail trade is carried on. 

The flow of business keeps pushing up the avenue, 
meeting with a check in the Public Library at Fortieth 
Street, but stopping for only a moment. It is felt 
again, almost immediately, at Forty-Second Street and 
beyond. Once more, at Fiftieth Street, there is an inter- 
ruption. The imposing Cathedral of St. Patrick seems to 
call a halt, while beyond it the Union Club, and opposite 
it the row of Vanderbilt houses with the University Club, 
make quite a barrier. It is said that the property- 
owners thereabouts will not sell for store purposes and 
that they will protect that spot of the avenue as a residence 
quarter. The tale has been told before, and answers 
perhaps for the present generation of land-owners; but 
what those who inherit will do no man can say. In the 
past they have generally preferred fresh fields and pastures 
new, and allowed the old places, beset by a circle of tall 
buildings, to be torn down and rebuilt for trade. As for 
the Cathedral-Vanderbilt reservation, a business incentive 



184 THE NEW NEW YORK 

bubbles up just beyond it in two lofty fashionable hotels, 
and sooner or later large department stores will come up 
to meet them. Then the reservation will be between the 
jaws of the hills — the sky-scrapers above and below it 
— and residence there will be no longer desirable. 

The Plaza at Fifty-Eighth Street is another gathering 
place for high hotels that nod and beckon at the shops 
to come on. It is an imposing square, opening as it does 
upon the Central Park, and illuminated as it is by that 
superb statue of Sherman by Saint Gaudens. In itself 
it is perhaps a better suggestion of how the new city will 
look when completed than almost any other portion of 
New York. The tall buildings hold together as a group 
and are, in measure, harmonious as to scale. To be sure, 
they make the square look small and the trees of the 
Central Park are dwarfed by them; but that could 
hardly be avoided. The squares and streets of the city 
could not be widened to meet the scale of the sky- 
scrapers. They will look smaller and narrower, losing 
somewhat in grandeur, as the buildings continue to ascend. 
The only compensation that one can squeeze out of it is 
that the streets will become more picturesque, just as the 
narrow passageways of Cairo are now more picturesque 
than the boulevards of Paris. 

Beyond the Plaza the avenue runs on, the Central Park 
on one side of it and a long row of ornate residences on 
the other. It is not likely that business will break into 




Pj 40. — Fifth Avknte fkom Metkoi'Oi.itan .Muskim 



FIFTH AVENUE AT FOUR 185 

this row for many years to come, if at all. It is more valu- 
able as a residence than as a business quarter, fronting as 
it does upon the park. As such it is closely held by people 
of wealth, who have erected residences that, too often, 
proclaim wealth without as well as within. Some of the 
houses there are ostentatious, to say the least. There is 
apparent in them a striving for the magnificent which 
frequently results in the ridiculous. The architectural 
pretense of one thing when it is clearly apparent that it 
is another thing; the wrong use of columns, keystones, 
arches, windows ; the over-ornamentation of fine stone that 
would look so much better unadorned, all suggest that the 
average millionaire and his wife have difficulty in spending 
their money sensibly, and that their architect is something 
of a goose in the bargain. 

The excuse for the architect is that he is interfered 
with and not allowed to carry out his plans; but aside 
from that he too often fails to rise to the occasion. Never, 
since the days of the Renaissance, has he had such a chance, 
with such new problems to solve, and such unlimited 
means to solve them with, as just now in New York. In 
sky-scraper, storehouse, armory, hotel, apartment-house, 
dwelling-house, there have been a thousand opportunities 
for the genius to proclaim himself. Many times the work 
has been done in a new and original way ; but many times, 
too, it has been a copy of an older building, or a con- 
servative variation of a known success. Over-decoration, 



186 THE NEW NEW YORK 

rather than want of proportion, has usually been its 
crying fault. The householder has only a fagade, say, 
thirty feet in width, with which to establish the identity 
of his house from that of his neighbor. He must use 
something individual and original on the outside, and that 
something is almost always ornamentation — chasing or 
carving in stringcourse or window-frame or doorpost. 
But it is seldom just, or true, or quite right; it is often 
overdone, or trivial, or out of scale. 

Yet with all that is bad or indifferent, with all that is 
abortive or absurd in Fifth Avenue houses, there is still 
a leaven of good, and much that may be justly regarded 
with pride as the promise of better things. The striving 
for results is not a thing to groan over in despair. It at 
least shows an attempt at originality, a discontent with 
present attainment, if you will, which is always the pre- 
liminary step to new creation. Out of much travail, per- 
haps, shall come a newer architecture — a nobler art. 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 



Pl. XI. -BROADWAY FF^OM MADISON SQUARi 



351AU92 MOaiQAM M05l"=l YAWQAOil-a - .iX jS 



CHAPTER XI 

SHOPS AND SHOPPING 

The wonderment at the enormous sums of money made 
down town in New York is paralleled by a still greater 
wonderment over the ease with which those sums are 
disbursed up town. Paul may plant and Apollos may 
water, but their domestic partners know how to distribute 
the increase. Not all of it. There is much said and writ- 
ten about people in the city 'living beyond their means," 
and many there are who do, no doubt; but the ma- 
jority is much too shrewd and far-seeing for that. It 
spends, and spends recklessly; but not everything is 
flung into the yearly budget. There is usually the 
wherewithal for more than one rainy day. 

The shopping habit in New York is said to be distinctly 
feminine. The majority of men hate the selection and 
buying of articles and usually put it off on their wives 
or sisters or other female relatives, even to the buying of 
such personal effects as ties, gloves, shirts, jewelry, and 
frequently suits of clothing. And the women usually 
take very kindly to the task. Many of the mid-wealthy 
class, so to speak, have few domestic duties or troubles; 

189 



190 THE NEW NEW YORK 

they live in apartments and, to avoid the servant problem, 
they usually get their breakfasts and luncheons in the 
restaurant downstairs, and their dinners at the larger 
places outside. Between meals, time is often plentiful, 
superabundant, even wearisome to the women flat-dwellers. 
They do not go down town, and they cannot stay in-doors 
forever; so, usually, they go out, "just to do a few er- 
rands." This means shopping. There is nothing else 
for many a poor woman to do. 

The tradition obtains in New York that the women shop- 
pers are given to much newspaper reading, with a noting of 
"special sales" of dry-goods and the like; that they dearly 
love a bargain counter and go in with a rush to buy unavail- 
able and superfluous articles just because they are cheap; 
that they are easily lured by nickel-catching devices and are 
made giddy by a window dressing or a perfervid showcase. 
Possibly this is masculine ridicule flung out to check the 
expense account. The casual observer does not pretend 
to delve into so intricate a problem. He knows merely that 
there is always a plenty of shoppers in the street, that 
they are nine out of ten of them wearing petticoats, 
and that the congestion of petticoats is greatest in the 
region where special sales and bargain counters are adver- 
tised. The conjunction of the crowd with the counter 
may be accident, but it looks predetermined. 

And what a crowd ! The residents of the up-town apart- 
ment-houses are only a part of it. Rich and fashionable 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 191 

people like to shop, too ; and besides, there is a great pro- 
cession that comes in from the suburbs every morning by 
ferry, tunnel, and railroad, and makes a straight line, not 
for Wall Street, but for the shopping district. The many 
forces usually gather and thicken along upper Sixth 
Avenue or Broadway between Madison Square and Thirty- 
Fourth Street, or on Twenty-Third Street, and by noon 
they fairly seethe. Many are so interested in the game 
of purchasing that they will not leave a shop for luncheon. 
They take an elevator and go to the top of the building 
where, in all the large department stores, there is a thirty- 
seven or a forty-nine cent luncheon, or its equivalent, to be 
had, served with expedition and sometimes with courtesy. 
After luncheon the shopping is continued, or a matinee at 
the theater is introduced as a side diversion. By five 
o'clock the out-of-towners, somewhat worn from wres- 
tling with the pave, the mob, and possibly the luncheon, 
are on the wa}'- home; the up-towners are squeezing into 
surface or elevated cars; and the day's work is done. 

There is a difference in the shopping crowds, dependent 
upon the places where they are seen. Occasionally along 
Broadway or Twenty-Third Street one sees a mingling 
of all the clans, all the circles, all the shopping world ; but 
usually certain classes go to certain sections and not else- 
where. Time was, and not so long ago at that, when the 
fashionable gathering place was Tenth Street and Broad- 
way, with an overflow into Fourteenth Street as far west 



192 THE NEW NEW YORK 

as Sixth Avenue; but the smart shops have followed the 
residences, and the people that once went there do so no 
more. Yet there are shops and shoppers still in Four- 
teenth Street. It is now the stamping ground, not of the 
poorest, but of the poorer classes; and in its window 
fronts are displayed dress-goods, haberdashery, head- 
gear, furniture, wall-papers, that seem expensive at any 
price. No doubt the shopkeepers there take great credit 
to themselves for discerning what the poor and ignorant 
want, and giving it to them ; but it is rather hard upon 
the poor. 

Fourteenth Street is always crowded with shoppers, and 
as they move by one seems to recognize factory girls, 
domestics, policemen's wives, janitors' daughters, mingling 
with suburban shoppers, and people of more means from 
up town. The older people are often dressed shabbily 
and look dingy in the face and hair; the younger ones 
are garbed flashily and cheaply, their clothing as pinch- 
beck as their jewelry. They look well-fed, laugh much, 
and are not objects of pity, save that they are misguided, 
and spend their money without substantial return. It is 
a somewhat awkward, heavy-moving crowd. It has the 
pace of those who are much ujoon their feet and moves in 
a tired way. The quickness of the Twenty-Third Street 
people — people who look as though they never did any 
work and were in continual need of exercise — is absent. 

The sidewalks on lower Sixth Avenue have similar- 








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Pl. 41. liKOADWAY NEAR TeNTH StREET 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 193 

looking groups and processions. They keep threading in 
and out of small shops and cheap stores, hoping in each 
new place to get what they want for less money than has 
just been asked them. In the end perhaps they have 
worn out more in shoe leather than they have saved on 
gloves or hat. 

As you move up Sixth Avenue the shoppers begin to 
look more prosperous, more alert, and more sure of what 
they want. They are largely suburbanites; and the 
woman who has come down from Tarrytown, or in from 
Plainfield, has the campaign of the day all planned before- 
hand, and the courage to drive it through to a finish. 
She and her cohorts have little fear of cabs and cars and 
policemen. They charge across the street in phalanxes, 
choke up the sidewalks, squeeze through revolving doors, 
pack the elevators, besiege the counters, fill up the res- 
taurants. All kinds and conditions of women are here 
— some stout, some thin, some lively, some severe, some 
handsome, some commonplace. All the colors of the 
rainbow flutter and stream from them at times. Many 
of them wear grays or dull browns or greens, but occa- 
sionally some bird of paradise floats by to lend a flash of 
high color to the scene. Up and down and across the 
streets the long hues come and go. Occasionally they 
get caught at the foot of an elevated station and whirl 
about in an eddy, or get choked in the door of a depart- 
ment store; but they unwind and quickly move on again 



194 THE NEW NEW YORK 

— a perspiring, excited, somewhat violent throng that fre- 
quently forgets its manners and its dignity in remembering 
its immediate mission. 

The shoppers on Twenty-Third Street are merely a 
right-angle pipe connection of the band on Sixth Avenue; 
and yet as soon as one mingles with the people on this 
cross street he recognizes quite a different element. That 
everyone hurries in New York is a commonplace, but 
this newer element seems to make haste with more ease 
and carriage. It is still a very miscellaneous throng, hav- 
ing its sharp contrasts of wealth and poverty, charm and 
repulsiveness, happiness and misery; and its constituent 
members in their actions are not unlike the shoppers on 
Sixth Avenue. They hang in clusters before the show- 
windows, gather like aggregations of ants about some new- 
found wonder, then disintegrate, move on, drop in some 
notion store, gather once more about a counter, separate 
and move on again. It is, however, an orderly, self-con- 
tained crowd, wears good clothes, does not care to have 
them soiled or torn in a crush, and has the idea that 
there is something ''common" about bargain-counter 
scrambles. Possibly it has more money in its purse than 
the crowd on Sixth Avenue, and that makes all the difference 
in the world in one's point of view. Besides, it is closely 
connected with Fifth Avenue — the pipe line extending 
through from both avenues, and being supplied from both 
ends. 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 195 

Fifth Avenue, of course, furnishes shops and shoppers 
of the more fashionable kind. The stores, with a few 
exceptions, are not large department affairs, but they 
are large enough to cause surprise when it is considered 
that each place handles perhaps only one kind of goods. 
The great jewelry stores, the silverware establishments, 
the china and glass concerns, are examples to the point. 
It is what is called a ''better kind of retail trade" 
that is met with here. It is the place where rare 
rugs, furniture, tapestries, pictures, bric-a-brac, books, 
laces, silks, hats, flowers, are bought; where fashionable 
tailoring and millinery are carried on; but where the 
smaller and cheaper articles such as cottons, ginghams, 
notions, ribbons, are usually not in stock. Nothing 
cheap is sold on Fifth Avenue. There are no bargain 
counters, no forty-nine-cent ruling prices; and people 
do not go there without a plethoric purse. Everything 
costs half as much again as it could be bought for around 
the corner — a statement that finds constant assertion 
and denial, and leads up to endless argument from in- 
dividual experience. The statement usually meets with 
acquiescence, however, except from those who perhaps 
seek to justify their own extravagance. 

And there are hosts of the extravagant in this shopping 
district. They usually have accounts at the various places, 
and have things '' charged" ; so that the day of reckoning 
is not the day of sinning. They buy what they want, and 



196 THE NEW NEW YORK 

oftentimes much that they do not want and cannot use ; 
but they seem not to be worried by errors of judgment. 
Things are sent back, or " changed," or more often perhaps 
packed off to the closets or garrets upstairs. The reckless- 
ness and the wastefulness of the shoppers on Fifth Avenue 
are promoting causes of the high prices that prevail there. 
The shoppers also have much to do with setting the pace 
for the flashy, garish populace of the city. The pinch- 
beck of the Bowery or Harlem is but the imitation of 
Fifth Avenue glitter. 

But what could be expected of the newly arrived daugh- 
ters and wives (yes, sons) of commerce who have to keep 
down the paternal income by ''doing things socially" ! 
They carry it off with quite an air, they swagger and pre- 
tend and make good feints at aristocratic bearing; but 
ever and anon some infamy of taste crops out to suggest 
they are still not very sure of their position. It takes 
several generations to establish gentility in the blood, 
and even then bad breeding and lack of education will 
come to the surface in the shape of a hat or the cut 
of a dress, as in the use of a fork or a phrase. But, all 
told, the commercial set of New York is not so bad. 
Considering its opportunities it handles itself with more 
aplomb than the corresponding classes in London, Berlin, 
or Paris. Doubtless the people of the older business 
centers were once the same in degree if different in kind. 
Carpaccio's characters from the Venetian life of the 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 197 

fifteenth century, as Paolo Veronese's of the sixteenth 
century, look like models of good taste to-day, but in 
their time they must have been regarded as splendidly 
barbaric. 

In its varied and multifold functions society in New 
York shows as well perhaps in shopping as in anything 
else. The very manner in which the women step out 
of their carriages, give directions to the footmen, and drift 
across the sidewalk into a shop entrance, has an air of 
distinction about it. The general impression is that the 
air is something courtly or princely, but in real life 
princesses and duchesses are often heavy and awkward 
in their exits and entrances, somewhat dowdyish in their 
clothing, and would be mistaken for very common folk by 
the mob. The American woman has very little in common 
with them. She is more graceful, more spirited, and far 
more ornate. She is dressed and sometimes overdressed 
— especially when she goes shopping. Her garments are 
of the best and most costly materials. That is the fault 
with them ; they are too good for the street and the shop. 
They fit her exactly, perfectly, precisely. That again is 
an objectionable feature. They fit too well and give the 
impression that they were meant for the stage rather than 
the street. If we cling to the old idea that garments are 
somewhat like a picture-frame and should not be noticed, 
that if conspicuously good or conspicuously bad they are 
objectionable, then the American woman has decidedly too 



198 THE NEW NEW YORK 

much garmenting. But she does not think so; and (to 
bury precedent for a moment) she certainly carries her 
clothes as no other woman ever did, carries them as though 
born to them and for them. And how she walks ! What 
a bearing she has ! No wonder that the strangers who 
come here are forever falling in love with the American 
girl. She is something of a fetich, to be sure ; but there 
is some excuse for the worship. She is far from being a 
wooden idol. 

All the shop people in New York are proficient in the 
art of making their windows interesting to the people 
passing in the street. There are professional men known 
as ''window dressers" who are said to earn unusual sums 
through their skill in displaying articles to the best ad- 
vantage in shop windows. Very attractive are some of 
these windows, not only in their arrangement, but also in 
the quality of the articles shown. In Europe things of 
fineness and value are hidden in the secret places of the 
shop and brought out only by special request, but in 
America they are often openly displayed. This does not 
mean jewels and goldsmith's work alone, but rare rugs, 
rich silks, fine porcelains, Japanese embroideries, works 
of art. It is not an unusual thing to see a twenty-thou- 
sand-dollar picture displayed in the window of a Fifth 
Avenue gallery, upon a background of valuable tapestry ; 
and the window of a china shop may show Chinese porce- 
lains that are worth many times their weight in gold. 



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Pl. 42. — TwKNTY-TiiiHi) Sthf.et 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 199 

On the inside of a New York store one is astonished by 
the stock carried. Whatever kind of stock it may be, it is 
almost always large in quantity and in variety. Floor 
after floor is filled to overflowing with silks, rugs, fine 
linens, woolens; with tons upon tons of bronzes, silver- 
ware, china; with uncountable boxes of hats, shoes, 
gloves, fans ; with tens of thousands of books, engravings, 
etchings, photographs. The furniture stores seem capable 
of supplying beds and chairs and chests of drawers for all 
creation; there are enough articles de Paris in the shops 
on or about Twenty-Third Street and Fifth Avenue to 
cover half the drawing-room tables in New York; and 
in the huge dry-goods stores along Broadway and in the 
side streets between Union and Madison squares, there are 
''dress goods" sufficient in quantity to clothe half the 
women and children in the land. The bulk of goods 
carried by the New York retail merchants is something 
enormous. 

Of course, such a volume of stock means a vast trade, 
and argues the existence of a rigid system of doing business. 
This is perhaps better exemplified in the department 
stores than elsewhere — stores so large that some of them 
cover a whole city square or block, and mount skyward in 
a dozen or fifteen stories. The system of such a store 
means the command and discipline of several thousand 
employees. The messengers, clerks, floor-walkers, cash 
boys, cashiers, make a small army in themselves. Each 



200 THE NEW NEW YORK 

one has his duty to perform, reports and is amenable to his 
superior officer, and takes orders without questioning. 
The two thousand employees of a Sixth Avenue store are 
possibly assigned to the selling of twenty thousand 
different articles. Almost anything can be bought there 
— a sealskin sack, a set of furniture, an automobile, a 
spool of cotton, a canary bird, or a litter of guinea pigs. 
All commerce is its province. It is the distributing agent 
of anything found, grown, or manufactured, and it seeks 
to satisfy all human wants (including afternoon tea), 
without leaving the premises. No wonder that womankind 
finds it an attractive place. It is a merger of interna- 
tional exposition and social reception, where you not 
only see the sights, but meet your friends. And occa- 
sionally there is an escape from the place without having 
purchased anything. 

The system of cash and change and charge in these 
stores is expeditious, bewildering to those who do not 
understand it ; and also at times maddening to those who 
do understand it. The system is unalterable, procrustean, 
and always manages to stretch you on the rack rather than 
the management. You have to ''do business" in their 
way, and the fact that you are the party of the second part 
in the contract — the one that makes the contract possible 
by paying the consideration — does not have any weight 
with them. The exasperating feature of it is that the store 
managers are not unlike railway and hotel men in that they 




Pl. 43. — Altman's, Fifth Avenue 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 201 

seem to regard their ''system" of rules as equivalent to 
state statutes. They ignore the inalienable right of the 
party of the second part to make conflicting rules of his 
own, if it so please him. However, the systems of the de- 
partment stores are usually accurate in their workings, 
and are as fair to all parties, perhaps, as could be expected. 
It must be remembered that they have to deal with people 
by the thousands — fifty or a hundred thousand in a single 
day — and how their different accounts with their conse- 
quent ''deliveries" and "returns" are kept requires some 
imagination to grasp. 

In addition to all this selling over the counter there is a 
very important "mail department" in these stores, through 
which goods are retailed over the whole of the United 
States, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, South America, and Eu- 
rope. Catalogues, and sometimes large magazines, with 
descriptions and price lists, are sent everywhere. From 
these the country people in Michigan or Missouri make 
selections and order by numbers. The cash is sent by 
draft or money order ; and the goods are forwarded by 
mail. Almost every kind of merchandise is sent through 
the mails — hats, shoes, cooking utensils, piece goods, any- 
thing that is not bulky like furniture or breakable like 
bottled liquors. In the aggregate this trade through the 
mails is very large. It is impossible to compute the 
volume of it. The retail trade of New York is something 
quite beyond figures. 



202 THE NEW NEW YORK 

At the Christmas holidays trade increases a hundred 
fold. The stocks of the stores are swollen to the point 
where goods seem to be pushing out the windows and doors, 
the clerical and messenger force is nearly doubled, and 
the crowd of buyers is trebled and quadrupled. The 
streets are inundated with people, the stores are flooded, 
the counters and cases are like islands in a sea. Buyer 
and seller, cash boy and floor-man, shoplifter and detective, 
are whirled about like driftwood. To an aboriginal it 
would look like humanity gone mad, but there is some 
method in it. Eventually everyone gets what is wanted, 
gets a seat or a strap in a car, gets home to tell the tale 
at the dinner table. And once more the good-nature of 
the crowd prevails above any little misunderstanding of 
the moment. It is something of a marvel that so many 
people of so many different minds and wants can still 
meet, adjust their differences or agreements, and then go 
their ways in peace. 

One asks himself, again, who they all are, what they all 
mean, or what the part they have in this scheme of things 
entire. What is the object of this energy displayed, 
this time given, this money spent? Perhaps it is not al- 
ways revealed on the surface, but there usually is some 
object in it other than idle amusement or personal vanity. 
The knick-knacks that a woman may pick up in a shop, the 
new rugs or rolls of wall-paper or cheap etchings that she 
may take home, may be nothing of importance in them- 





Pl. 44. — Tikfaxy'.s, Fifth Avfxue 



SHOPS AND SHOPPING 203 

selves; but, somehow, she instinctively feels that they 
will make the house look more comfortable or cheerful 
or refined, and thus add to the pleasure of the family. It 
is the same with a great many of the hundreds of thou- 
sands. They are, unconsciously perhaps, striving to make 
someone happier, to give an uplift to the home, to make 
life more worth the living. And in the aggregate of the 
mass, in the combined aspirations of the throng, what se- 
quence must be forthcoming? Surely a broader outlook, 
a nobler living ; and, ultimately, a higher civilization. No 
doubt some of the energy employed is wasted, completely 
dissipated and lost ; but much of it redounds to our good, 
makes for righteousness, and possibly finds us each to- 
morrow farther than to-day along the pathway of the 
better life. 



NEW YOKK BY NIGHT 



Pl. XII. CONKY ISLAND ON THE BEACH 



H0A3a 3HT HO GMAJ^I Y3H00 .IIX .jS 




5? » ^\* ■ 






CHAPTER XII 

NEW YORK BY NIGHT 

Before it is dark in the city the electric street lamps, 
hanging from their steel yard-arms, begin to sizzle as 
though trying to live up to a steady illumination, and 
their ground-glass globes take on beautiful opalescent 
tints of pink and lilac. This is the preliminary sputtering 
suggestive of the coming current. It ceases as the current 
grows stronger; and, as the dark falls, the lilac globes 
turn into marked spots of light and become related and 
associated with other spots of light. From block to 
block balls of yellow or orange or pure white or blue- 
violet appear. The city is soon illuminated — parts 
of it almost ablaze. At its height the brilliancy of Paris, 
''the city of light," seems just a little dull by comparison. 

All over the city the lights are burning. The Brooklyn 
Bridge seen from Governor's Island is a tracery of filigree 
work set with silver stars, underneath on the river and 
around on the Hudson the ferry-boats come and go like 
huge fireflies, the South Ferry region and the Battery 
glare with arc lights, the elevated overhead trails a chain 
of fire, the high office-buildings show ten thousand illumi- 

207 



208 THE NEW NEW YORK 

nated windows, the dome of the World Building is a 
glittering ring in the heavens, the Singer tower is a 
nocturne in gold and blue. 

After nine o'clock many of the down-town lights upon 
towers and domes are extinguished, the office windows 
show dark, the few shop fronts burn only night lights for 
the patrolmen. The electric street lamp, with its blue 
tinge, flares along the thoroughfares, but the dark shadow 
accompanies it. People on the street pass infrequently, 
and the cab is not often seen. The trolley clangs along 
Broadway and the elevated continues to roar from 
Church Street, but otherwise the stillness is almost pro- 
found. Especially is this true of Wall and Broad streets, 
where in the daytime thousands are coming and going. 
What silence under the walls of the great sky-scrapers ! 
And what shadows those twenty-story buildings cast down 
into the narrow streets ! The electric shaft flashes up into 
them, piercing them here and there, but not annihilating 
them. Along the cornices and stringcourses and bottle- 
shaped cupolas they still linger. 

Around Old Trinity at the head of the street, with its 
well-like area, the shadows gather deeper and even more 
mysteriously. The giant sky-scrapers about it impose their 
purple silhouettes one upon another until everything 
looks a little out of focus and uncertain in dimensions. 
Goblin shapes spread upward on the night veil, or dance like 
specters on the flat-faced walls, while possibly around the 




Pi.. 4"). — Shehman Statuk — Evening 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 209 

top of the well runs a series of sparkles and glitters struck 
off by the moonlight falling upon peaks and pinnacles. 

Broadway seems lighter than the other streets of the 
lower city, owing no doubt to the continuous string of 
trolleys that run there. And the trolleys with their lights 
seem to lead but one way, and that up town. Perhaps 
it is the human moths moving in that direction that give 
one such an impression, but certainly there is the feeling 
that the grand fireworks are somewhere under the reflect- 
ing sky of the upper city. At Union Square there is 
apparently an increase in the power of the lights (an illu- 
sion, no doubt), on Fifth Avenue an increase in their 
numbers; but the central illumination of all is on upper 
Broadway, in the theater district. Beyond that to 
Seventy-Second Street, along Amsterdam and West End 
avenues and Riverside Drive, around Columbia University 
and along the Harlem River, even creeping across the 
bridges at the upper end of the city, the hnks of light 
extend. 

Of course, much of this lighting is carried out by 
the city lamps and by trolleys ; but the brilliancy of certain 
streets and spots like Herald Square, or Times Square, or 
the shop portion of Fifth Avenue, is materially augmented 
by the quantity of show-windows, and the prevalence 
everywhere of the electric sign. All the store fronts are 
now illuminated by electricity or a briUiant quality of 
gas, and some of the larger places have rows of lights run- 



210 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ning along edges and cornices, thus outlining the whole 
building from foundation to roof. The electric sign 
now goes along with every place of amusement, and is 
frequently flashed at night from large commercial houses, 
hotels, railroad sheds, and steamboat docks. When to 
this is added the glitter of the ordinary advertisement 
sign from scores of roof tops and wall-spaces, the total 
effect becomes quite bewildering. 

Generally speaking, the sign is the same nuisance in 
New York that it is in London or Paris — only more so. 
It is put up almost everywhere from one end of the city to 
the other. Every piece of boarding, every bare wall, 
every decrepit roof top or vacant window, is plastered with 
signs. Sandwich men trail them along the curbings; 
wagons parade the streets with them. Advertisements 
are in your room at the hotel, on your dinner card, on your 
car tickets, your wrapping paper, your cigar bands. 
Wherever the public goes, the sign takes up the trail and 
follows after. It even pursues people out into the country, 
where it covers the fence boards and crawls with enormous 
letters over the farmers' barns and stables. If you fly 
by fast train and look out of the window, lo, the sign is 
there ! Rows and rows of boardings, with grotesque and 
hideous personifications upon them, parallel the great 
trunk-lines out of the city for many miles, disfiguring the 
landscape, ruining many an amiable disposition, and 
making a farce of any pretense to love of nature, or 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 211 

love of one's fellow-man, or even common suburban 
decency. 

Perhaps the most degrading thing about all these 
signs is that three-quarters of them advertise businesses 
with which no respectable person would be connected, 
and push forward wares that no one but a charlatan 
would lend his name to. Patent medicines and beauty 
lotions lead the list, with questionable statements about 
the value of canned soups, or pickles, or whiskies, coming 
in as a good second. There is not one sign in a dozen that 
tells the truth, or even pretends to do so. It is a blatant 
puffing of somebody's business at the expense of the public 
patience. Wherever one turns, he has Smith's hair tonic, 
or Brown's corsets, or Jones's consumption cure thrust at 
him, until he wonders if the world was made solely for the 
rapacious energy of the Smiths, Browns, and Joneses. 
The low mendacity exercised in tricking the foolish or the 
unfortunate is not more reprehensible than the brutal 
disregard of other people's rights in country view, or city 
street, or public conveyance. 

And there is not the saving grace of art to make the 
evil less repulsive. The whole battalion of New York sign- 
makers could hardly muster the genius of one Cheret. 
Occasionally something proves attractive in color or is 
novel in design ; but usually attention is compelled by the 
strident quality of blue or red, or the exaggerated pro- 
portions of the figures or letters. Crudeness mixed with 



212 THE NEW NEW YORK 

vulgarity seems to be purposely chosen, as though the 
object of advertising was to put you in a rage rather than 
lure you on to further inquiry. And the coarseness of the 
onset does enrage many nervous and sensitive people. 
The vociferous injunction in poison greens to ''Drink 
Somebody's Coffee" or ''Smoke Everybody's Cigarettes" 
is an insult in itself. And it might be done with delicacy, 
with insinuating grace of line, even with a charm of form 
and color. But there is too much of the get-rich-quick in 
the average advertiser to pursue modest methods. He 
seeks to stampede you with a shout, and pick your pocket 
while he pushes you. 

In New York at night some of the cruder advertising 
disappears, or reappears in a less objectionable form. The 
electric signs show everywhere and, though one wearies 
unto death with what they say, the light of them helps on 
the general illumination and is rather attractive than 
otherwise. Roof lines are their favorite locations, though 
doorways, arches, chimneys, vacant wall-spaces, are all 
utilized. Letterings, patternings, arabesques, figures of 
birds and beasts and men, are outlined by small electric 
globes, and the whole thrust upon the night in giant 
proportions. Sometimes there are changing letters and 
different readings, or flash lights that keep blinking and 
going out in darkness like miniature lighthouses, or 
shifting globes giving different colored lights. 

All told, the glitter and glare of these signs make up 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 213 

a bewildering and (it may be admitted) a brilliant sight. 
Great throngs of people delight in them, and perhaps the 
presence of so many people on the streets at night is, in 
measure, accounted for by the electric display. The 
avenues and some of the cross-streets are usually filled 
with people who are moving leisurely along, stopping 
to look in at shop windows, drawn in at moving-picture 
shows by the glare of electricity, or grouped about some 
place where music is heard. All over the better-lighted 
streets of the upper city one finds these lines of strollers 
out for a walk, interested in meeting friends, seeking 
some sort of amusement or diversion. Fourteenth Street, 
east and west, crowded with foreigners, is not different 
from Forty-Second Street, east and west, crowded with 
young Americans. Men and women, old and young, 
rich and poor, happy and miserable, — again, one cannot 
help wondering who they are, where they come from, 
and where they are going; and the mild wonder if 
there are any but the sick, the aged, and the ''queer," 
who remain at home quietly, spending an old-fashioned 
evening with books, or music, or friends. 

Perhaps the largest gatherings in the evening up town 
are about the opera-houses, the theaters, the vaudeville and 
concert halls, the restaurants, the clubs. From Thirty- 
Fourth Street to Columbus Circle and beyond is just now 
the amusement center; and there the people, the cabs, 
and the electric signs are the thickest. At eight in the 



214 THE NEW NEW YORK 

evening there is the incessant come and go of trolleys, the 
rattle and rumble of cabs, the shuffle and push of many 
feet along the street, the insistent voice of ticket specu- 
lators, and the unintelligible shout of men and boys 
hawking night editions of newspapers. The Gothamite 
usually pays no attention to this moving roar, in fact he 
does not see it or hear it; but the stranger is interested 
in it because perhaps he fancies it stands for the city's 
gayety. Usually, however, it means only noise, and a dis- 
agreeable kind at that. The real interest begins, possibly, 
at the entrance to the opera and the theater, when the 
carriages draw up and people step down and out. They 
make quite an animated throng as they enter the vestibules 
or crowd the staircases, or the foyer, bowing and chatting 
to each other, all smiling, all newly garbed, all on pleasure 
bent. The filling up of a theater with people, the drifting 
in and the taking of seats, the buzz of conversation, the 
recognition of acquaintances, the visiting between the 
acts, are sometimes more amusing to the onlookers than 
the play itself. 

Another interesting sight, especially at the opera, is 
the row of boxes containing people of more or less 
prominence socially. When Society shops, it does not 
anticipate an audience, though it may be very handsomely 
garbed for all that ; when it drives, its fine feathers may 
be muffled by wraps or shut in by the carriage cover; 
but when it goes to the opera, it does so in full regalia, 




Pl. K). I I'l'ii; ISkdadw AV XidiiT 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 215 

with all its war paint on, to be seen by friend and foe alike. 
The costumes are of the finest fabric and the most artistic 
design, the jewels are the rarest and the most brilliant, 
the coiffure (including the toque or tiara) the most fetching, 
the fan the most dazzhng. Seated in its boxes against a 
background of gold and red silk, Society looks very impos- 
ing, very magnificent. And it seems to be very happy, for 
it wears a beatific smile and sheds an extra beam of pleasure 
when its members bend to speak to each other. The 
slightest contact produces the smile, though people before 
them have smiled and smiled and smiled and still been 
villainously unhappy. But if any sorrow is behind the 
mask, you do not see it. They may grow sad-faced when 
at home and undressing for the night, but not pubHcly 
will they show a rueful countenance. 

After the play or the opera is over all the exits are 
hastily thrown open. People cannot get away fast enough 
by the main entrances. They may stop a moment to talk 
to some acquaintance, but usually they lose patience with 
anyone who holds up the line of people on the stairways 
or in the vestibule. Just why or what their haste they 
scarcely know. Most of them are going home and to bed, 
and are in no hurry about it if they stopped to think ; but 
possibly a third of the audience is going somewhere to 
supper, and it is this minority that sets the speed for the 
others until they are quite persuaded that they, too, are 
in a hurry to secure a table somewhere. Everyone in 



216 THE NEW NEW YORK 

New York is not in such hot haste as he appears. Many 
would, if they could, move slowly, but they understand 
they must move at the New York pace or else be stepped 
upon. Thus it is that the average person gets out of a 
theater faster than he went in ; and after he is alone on 
the sidewalk he perhaps stops to think what he will do 
or where he will go. 

If he is a lone bachelor or with men friends, perhaps he 
goes off to the Players Club on Gramercy Park, where the 
actors assemble after the play to talk, smoke, or have sup- 
per. If the way lies up Fifth Avenue, perhaps the theater- 
goer may turn into the artistic Century, the political Union 
League, the academic University, the social Union, or the 
grandiose Metropolitan. They are nearly all of them pre- 
tentious clubs, nearly all of large proportions, nearly all 
furnished like modern hotels, — with more extravagance 
than taste. The columns and gildings, the lounges, cur- 
tains, and rugs that set off the smoking, reading, and 
reception rooms, would be more appropriate perhaps in 
some palace ball-room. But there is no denying their com- 
fort. They are like the Pullman car, over which we may 
worry because of its want of simplicity, but not because 
of the softness of its seats. 

The clubs of New York are perhaps the most luxurious 
known anywhere in the modern world. That is said to be 
their crying evil. They are too good a substitute for a 
home; and many men adopt them, have the club address 




Pl. 47. — Plaza by Moonlight 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 217 

put on their visiting cards, get their mail there, Hve there. 
The prominent ones with good dining-room accommoda- 
tions are well patronized. That portion of the community 
afflicted with too much time to kill, and perhaps for that 
reason called the ''leisure class," goes to its club every 
afternoon, and usually ends up there every evening. So- 
called "club men" keep fihng in and out all day long; and 
not an inconsiderable constituency takes breakfast there 
in the morning. 

Aside from the large clubs the city is well supphed with 
organizations devoted to work, to study, to music, to art, 
to the theater. All of them make for society. The small 
theater club of ten or a dozen members is existent upon 
almost any city block. Ostensibly it is devoted to a study 
of the drama. A play is seen, and afterwards the party 
adjourns to some restaurant or member's house, has its 
theater supper, and perhaps discusses the performance. 
These are generally juvenile gatherings, modest enough 
in scale and possibly shallow enough in criticism, but 
enjoyable, judging by the faces and the laughter. Young 
people in New York have the same good time, on slight 
provocation, that they do elsewhere in the world. 

Swelldom, with Boredom on its arm, of course goes to 
the theater with a loftier air, and afterward drops in at 
Sherry^s or Delmonico's for supper with a more sophisti- 
cated and wearied repose of manner. The two great 
restaurants are never very empty in the evening, and yet 



218 THE NEW NEW YORK 

both feel somewhat the influx of people from the opera 
and the theater between eleven and twelve. Suppers are 
ordered, people chat vivaciously, the wind instruments 
of the orchestra rise above the buzz of conversation and 
the rattle of dishes, waiters flit here and there, guests move 
from table to table to greet acquaintances, the odor of 
flowers mingles with the steam of cooking, the flash of 
diamonds and cut-glass table-ware gets mixed up with 
silks, portieres, marble pilasters, gilded ceilings, pink-and- 
yellow colorings. Eating and drinking, instead of being 
the satisfaction of a physical need, is here a social function. 
The drawing feature is not so much the food as the crowd. 
That is why the fashionable restaurants are fashionable, — 
why they are always crowded in spite of high charges. 

The two famous restaurants, which somehow always 
find their way into print as though they fed half the 
people of New York, are only a small part of the 
food-supplying establishments of the city. The number 
of restaurants, cafes, lunch counters — places where food 
is cooked and served — is something amazing to strangers. 
Some of the side streets are Uned and dotted with eating 
establishments; all the railway stations, department 
stores, sky-scrapers, apartment-houses, have kitchens 
attached to them, and the hundreds of hotels often gather 
more profit from ''transients" than from their regular 
guests. Besides these there are large hall-like places where 
table d'hote dinners are served, with music, to miscellaneous 




Pl. 48. — Sheuhy's (left) and Delmonico's (right) 



NEW YORK BY NIGHT 219 

parties; cafes, French, German, Hungarian, where what 
is left of Bohemia hkes to assemble and drink foreign wines; 
oyster and chop houses, where nomads drop in and eat in 
silence ; dairies and confectionery shops, where women go 
for lunch or afternoon tea. There seems no end to the 
traffic in cooked things, nor to the places where they are 
supplied. 

The stranger passing from restaurant to restaurant 
in up-town New York after seven in the evening, would 
be very apt to conclude that most of the city had given 
up house-keeping and was taking its meals "out." And 
he would not be far from the mark in his conclusion. 
High rents for houses and the constant irritation over 
servants have driven many thousands to seek sleeping 
quarters in flats and eating accommodations in hotels and 
restaurants. The social conditions in New York are not 
favorable to the development of the domestic household. 
Even some of the very wealthy people in the city have, 
of recent years, preferred taking a suite of apartments at a 
hotel to the opening of their town house for the winter 
months. 

After the theater, and after the supper, when the hours 
run into the morning and people begin to grow weary even 
of themselves, they silently shp away, singly and in pairs, 
by cab and car, scattering to the far ends of the city per- 
haps, disappearing up brown-stone steps, through the 
entrances of apartment-houses, or down hotel corridors. 



220 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The city roar dies down a little, the Hghts gUtter far up 
the streets where only belated stragglers are seen, the 
patrolmen go along their beats, stopping occasionally 
to pull at a door knob, or pass a word with a late diner. 
The city sleeps for a few hours, — sleeps "lively" for fear 
it will be late to business in the morning, sleeps like a weary 
columbine at the theater wing, in all its paint and spangles, 
expecting its call to "go on" at any moment. 



HOMES AND HOUSES 



Pl. XIII. APARTMENT HOUSES, UPPER BROADWAY 



YAWQAOJ^a JIH^'IU ,a32U0H TH3MT51A<RA .IIIX jS 




'T« 



CHAPTER XIII 

HOMES AND HOUSES 

There are plenty of stopping-places in New York, plent}- 
of hotels, apartments, rooms en suite, boarding-houses, 
dwelling-houses ; but not a great many homes. It takes 
something more than a quadrangle of brick or marble to 
make a home. A community of interest, a domestic 
feeling, even some old-fashioned sentiment, are necessary; 
and, unfortunatel}'', the average New Yorker feels he can- 
not indulge in such things freely, — at least, not within the 
city limits. It is ground in upon him at every turn that 
the city is a place for business, not sentiment. Wife and 
children and kindred may be with him, but their being in 
the city is only a temporary arrangement. The roof over- 
head is a camping place where they rest for a night, or a 
month, or a year, but not for an indefinite period. The 
home is off somewhere in the country — up the river, 
along the Sound, over in New Jersey — rather than in the 
city. Even those who have no place in the country move 
about so often, from one portion of the town to another, 
that they are nearly as homeless as gypsies. Permanence, 
the corner-stone of the domestic estabhshment, is lacking. 

223 



224 THE NEW NEW YORK 

People when compelled to live in the cramped quarters 
of a shop where they carry on a trade, soon adjust them- 
selves to the shop conditions by doing away with all un- 
necessary impedimenta. Whether permanent or temporary, 
they must put up with inconveniences, and get along with 
little friction and less worry. The New Yorker in his 
big shop feels very much the same way, and his wife 
heartily agrees with him. When they are able to have 
that ideal place in the country, they will have their own 
table, their own rooms, their own porch and doorstep; 
they will have horses and servants and flower-gardens and 
open air, with the luxury of green fields and the simple 
life; but while they occupy a series of little cells in the 
fifteenth story of a sky-scraper, reached by an express 
elevator, warmed by steam, and lighted by electricity, 
what is the use of trying to keep a cow or striving to grow 
hlac bushes ? Bottled milk left on the doorsill, and a 
rubber-plant that grows up a chimney as readily as else- 
where, are obviously the proper substitutes. 

So it is that the citizen of Gotham soon becomes an 
economist of effort. He cuts away the worries and bothers. 
He and his wife dodge the servant question at the start by 
taking an apartment instead of a whole house, and getting 
their food downstairs in the restaurant instead of prepar- 
ing it themselves. A maid looks after the sweeping and 
cleaning of the place, messenger boys and the telephone 
do the errands, and the janitor fights off agents, gas men, 



iffi"^ 



■ii 






ml ?. ^? A 



.^M 



r' 









^{i .s 







Pl. 49. — Beginning of Madison Avenue 



HOMES AND HOUSES 225 

and beggars. The place may not be large, but it is usually 
well supplied with conveniences and labor-saving devices. 
One does not have to think about Hght or fuel or ice 
or ashes. Steam and gas, with refrigerating currents, are 
turned on by valves. Then, too, the apartment is fire- 
proof and generally burglar-proof. The whole family can 
go away for a day or for a year ; the premises are guarded 
and no one has to worry about them. The burden of 
house-keeping is lifted at once, and the family becomes a 
boarder with the privacy of its own floor. 

Of course there are compensatory losses. The rooms 
are small, often ill-Hghted, and there are seldom enough 
of them to warrant family visiting. Even in the larger 
flats, where house-keeping is carried on with many servants, 
entertainment is never quite satisfactory. Then one 
misses his own doorstep, misses the family dog and cat, 
and, worst of all, the children miss their playground. The 
apartment is only a makeshift, and not a good substitute 
for a home, but it is the best the harried New Yorker can 
get. He does not want to travel morning and evening on 
the suburban trains, and his wife wishes to see something 
of city life, so the apartment-house yawns for him as in- 
evitably as the East Side tenement-house for the penniless 
immigrant from Europe. 

Money ameliorates the condition of the flat-dweller 
somewhat. There are apartments quite as commodious 
as houses, in which luxury sits enthroned and convenience 

Q 



226 THE NEW NEW YORK 

waits at every door jamb ; and there are suites in hotels 
with private dining rooms and special servants that are 
designed and fitted up for aristocracy, or plutocracy, or 
anyone who cares to pay for them. The furnishing is 
most sumptuous, the service most elaborate, the facilities 
for easy hving quite perfect; and yet somehow the in- 
habitants never quite rid themselves of the idea that they 
are tenants in common with others in a huge caravansary, 
and not in their own house. The same idea is borne in 
upon the poorer famiUes living in Lexington Avenue 
boarding-houses, and comes to the nest of Italians curled 
up on the floor of a Mott Street tenement, but perhaps it 
frets them less. All of them are conscious of being in 
temporary possession only, occupying something that does 
not belong to them. It may be a simple bare room or an 
elaborate suite of rooms, but it is not home. 

Dwelling-houses would seem to be very different, but 
in reality they still leave much to be desired. Time was, 
thirty or more years ago, when a brick house on Washing- 
ton Square, a brown-stone front on Fifth or Madison x\ve- 
nue or on a side street, meant home in a broad sense of 
the word; but New York was a small city then. Times 
have greatly changed. The brown-stones on the avenues 
have been metamorphosed into stores or been replaced 
by tall buildings ; the houses on the side streets have been 
overhauled and remodeled ; a number of brick houses still 
hnger in Washington Square, but fashion no longer cares 



HOMES AND HOUSES 227 

to live there. The new residences that have come into 
existence on the side streets, along the Riverside Drive, 
along upper Fifth Avenue, are great improvements upon 
the old, but it is doubtful if they are so homelike as the 
old. They are infinitely more convenient, wonderfully 
more ornate, several times more expensive, but they are 
also less inhabited, less of a loadstone to the family, less 
permanent. 

These new styles of domestic architecture are many 
and heterogeneous. Some of them are of Beaux-Arts 
origin, some are Colonial, some have New Art features, 
and some have no art whatever, but are simply buildings. 
They are more often made up of the pickings and stealings 
of many styles — attempts at the English town house, 
the French chateau, the Italian palace, with miscellaneous 
features lugged in from many quarters. But with all 
their sins of combination and over-ornamentation, they 
are, on the whole, successful in construction. Especially 
is this true of the houses on the side streets, built of brick 
with stone or marble trimmings, or of gray stone with 
balconies, square windows, and iron railings. They are 
unpretentious, substantial, Hvable. The gloom of the 
old brown-stone residence, lighted fore and aft only, has 
been dispelled by larger openings and by broad skylights, 
with the consequent results of more air and better hy- 
giene. The high Dutch stoop, which was never other 
than an architectural abomination, is no longer employed. 



228 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The new houses have entrances on the curb Hne, and 
those that are merely remodeled have the stoop-rise on 
the inside in a short run of broad steps to the first floor. 
The grilles and vestibules are usually massive and simple, 
and the furnishing of the halls rather meager. Marble 
walls and flooring, with a table, a chair, and a rug, are 
usually considered sufficient. 

But the drawing-room on the first floor more than atones 
for any austerity at the entrance. It is usually a wonder 
both in the quality and the quantity of the things it holds. 
Many of them resemble nothing so much as antique shops, 
and seem to require only the presence of a red flag and an 
auctioneer to begin a sale. The fad for things old has 
reigned in New York for years, and is still on the throne. 
The fact that many of the ''antiques" bought in these 
days are bare-faced forgeries, or at best merely copies, 
does not seem to give anyone caution. People keep on 
buying them, keep on "furnishing" with them, until the 
drawing-room becomes unbearable, almost unthinkable. 
Tables and lounges with gilded legs, and old velvets for 
coverings, vie with tapestries and portieres. Pictures 
on the walls share the decorative scheme with stained- 
glass windows, gilded wood-carvings, pieces of old sculp- 
ture, door jambs from Italian palaces, and mantels from 
French chateaux. Louis Seize cabinets back up against 
the walls and hold Chinese porcelains, silver, glass, minia- 
tures; musical instruments of quaint designs are flung 



HOMES AND HOUSES 229 

down here and there with careful neglect; and scraps of 
old embroidery or Oriental frippery are tacked on chairs 
or carved benches. 

It is all very costly, and some of it very beautiful ; but 
one sadly wonders why it should litter up a place where 
people Hve. Can anyone be happy amid such a restless 
conglomeration of plunder, representing all ages and all 
countries, save our own? It may appear artistic, even 
learned or romantic, to be continually associated with 
archaeological remains ; to be playing on Beethoven's piano, 
or eating from Napoleon's plates, or reading by the lamp 
of some buried Caesar ; but it certainly is not comfortable, 
nor is it very sensible. It is too much of a strain at hap- 
piness; and that, too, without a breath of originality. 
The decorators around the corner will make the whole 
hodge-podge for you while you are away on a summer 
vacation. When you return in the autumn, you may walk 
in, take possession, and find a place to sit down, if you 
can. Of course, you can exist in such a bric-a-brac shop; 
and your wife's friends may come in to tea and admire it 
greatly, but there is nothing very homelike about it. 

The ''front parlor" in America never yet proved a joy 
to the family. In the early days of horse-hair cloth, old 
mahogany, and English carpets it was a place of gloom, — 
a closed-and-light-barred room, save when ''company" 
came. Later on, in the era of black walnut, it became 
more ornate with Italian frescoes on the ceiling, velvet 



230 THE NEW NEW YORK 

carpets, red satin curtains, pier glasses set in carved or 
gilded frames, the inevitable black piano, and to balance 
it a piece of white tombstone sculpture, representing 
"Faith" or "Hope" — something well calculated to dis- 
pel both virtues from one's mind and heart. 

But flat and tasteless as this latter style was, it was 
hardly more wearisome than the present one. You could 
ignore the "parlor," dodge it, go around it; but the draw- 
ing-room of to-day fixes you with its ghtter, insists upon 
being seen. It is a museum. Fine as its contents may 
be (and many of the individual things are superb), their 
bringing together, their unrelated and discordant huddling 
in an inappropriate living room, in an unsympathetic 
household, in an absolutely foreign land, is a barbarity, — 
an imitated barbarity at that. When the ancients plun- 
dered from others, it was generally to fill a gap, to supply 
porphyry or marble or bronze where they had none of their 
own ; but there is no such excuse for the Americans. We 
have abundant native materials at our feet, but we either 
discard them because they are familiar, as stupid people 
ignore field flowers, or we despise them because they are 
not old. 

The library — I am still speaking of the interior of the 
fashionable house — is several degrees better than the 
drawing-room, in that it has fewer things in it. The books 
are usually superb in every way — nice editions, nice bind- 
ings, nicely placed on the shelves, nicely glassed, — but 



vii«;osxY MHx — T.C "id 




HOMES AND HOUSES 231 

seldom read. The chairs are large and comfortable, the 
tables neatly layered with the latest magazines, the walls 
covered with engravings or pictures. Of course, there are 
Oriental rugs, Pompeian bronzes, and Greek vases scattered 
about, just to encourage a classic spirit. It makes a good 
room to show off to one's new friends while smoking after 
dinner. It intimates a taste on the part of its possessor 
for loftier things than are furnished by the world, the flesh, 
and 'Hhe Street." But, unfortunately, it pretends to 
more th^n it fulfills. 

Possibly the dining room is the most useful room in 
the whole house, aside from the kitchen. It is usually 
commodious, convenient, and appropriate. Dinners oc- 
casionally are given for ten or maybe twenty guests, and 
night after night there are perhaps two or three intimate 
friends at the table. Spindle-legged furniture of great 
age and decrepitude would not answer for constant use. 
The chairs and tables are, therefore, of substantial mate- 
rials, often of beautiful dark woods, rubbed smooth and 
left unadorned by carving or gilding of any sort. The 
linen and china are of corresponding excellence; but the 
glass is often too fine or too much cut, and the silver is 
usually over-ornamented. All told, however, the dining 
room with its paneling and portraits, its sideboards and 
china cabinets, is a good room. At times it looks a little 
like the private dining room of some fashionable hotel, 
but it is at least serviceable. 



232 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Upstairs in the dressing-rooms and bedrooms there is 
not so much display of antiquities, but a beautiful Utter 
of things modern, with perhaps more pieces in one room 
than would comfortably furnish two. The keynote of 
quantity is struck by the dressing-table of the young lady 
of the house. It is usually strewn with enough super- 
fluities in silver — brushes, trays, bottles, picture-frames, 
button-hooks, scissors, knives, paper-weights, thermome- 
ters — to start a small shop on a side street. The unhappy 
phase of it is that, while the quantity is so enormous, 
scarcely a piece of it is good in quality. A self-respecting 
gas man would hardly accept it as chandelier ornament. 
That it bears the names of great Fifth Avenue silversmiths 
is only so much the worse for the taste of the silversmiths. 
For the rest of the room there may be quantities of small 
pictures, many hangings and curtainings, many furbelows, 
and much lace work. These, with simple enough beds, 
chairs, and floor rugs against a background of large-pat- 
terned wall-paper or silk paneling, make up what is called 
the ''color scheme" of the room. 

From top to bottom this fashionable New York house has 
what are called ''the comforts of home," but not the home- 
like feehng. There is the reach for happiness — the at- 
tempt to gain it by and through possessions. Almost 
everything that the heart could wish for is there — books, 
pictures, bric-a-brac, hangings, furniture, the very gUtter 
and the gleam of gold; — but the tyranny of things is 




■If ilfj 



f^3 



Pl. 51. — Fifth Avexuk Houses 



HOMES AND HOUSES 233 

there also. Happiness cannot be gotten out of possessions, 
nor homes bought with houses; and, sooner or later, the 
splendid town house becomes merely a gilded cage. Per- 
haps that is why so many of them are closed, boarded up, 
deserted, with the family out in the country or hving 
around the corner in some fashionable hotel. 

But this story belongs with the domestic skeleton, and 
is not brought out at the dinner-table. On the surface, 
everything is most alluring, most engaging; in conse- 
quence of which, perhaps, the influence of the fashion- 
ables is much wider than their numbers would warrant. 
For in a small way the poorer people — the clerks, 
shop-keepers, agents, and little place-holders — try to 
follow the rich, and in doing so they manage to over- 
furnish and bedizen their small quarters with atrocious 
bric-a-brac, plush-framed plaques, bad etchings, and 
ugly "art squares." Their table furniture and bedroom 
decorations are usually on the same plane of cheapness 
and worthlessness. The whole result is banal in the ex- 
treme. In it the home is perhaps no more apparent than 
in the houses of the rich. 

Of course, the very poor of the East and West Sides, 
living in tenements or small houses, do not bother them- 
selves with much furnishing of any kind. They buy what 
is necessary — generally inexpensive and badly made 
articles — and live from hand to mouth, from day to 
day, as best they can, quite regardless of art or fashion. 



234 THE NEW NEW YORK 

In this respect they are not strikingly different from the 
poor of London or BerUn or Vienna. The places where 
they live can hardly be called homes; they are merely 
haunts, districts where their fellows gather, habitations 
that are accessible or possible to them. Neither the very 
rich nor the very poor have homes in New York. 

But every city or community is saved by its conserva- 
tive element, and New York is not an exception. The 
quiet and unpretentious who are engaged in hundreds of 
professions and business enterprises, who domestically 
lead the simple life in modest houses and are not swayed 
by fashions or fads of any kind, must always be reckoned 
with. They are not usually remarked, because there is 
nothing very remarkable about either their lives or their 
habitations, except that in both there is the note of sanity. 
Thousands of such people and such places are to be found 
in New York — places where the furnishings are plain, 
comfortable, unobtrusive, and the family rather than the 
"antiques" lend the interest; where the functions and the 
guests are unannounced in the newspapers ; where society 
in its best sense is to be found, and fashion in its wolst 
sense rarely intrudes. 

It is in such houses that one finds the nearest approach 
to homes that a great city is capable of maintaining. And 
yet even here the home feeling is, and must be from neces- 
sity, rather slight. The tenure of the house is too uncer- 
tain. The changes in the city, the continual encroachments 



'TJ 




HOMES AND HOUSES 235 

of the business section upon the residence section, the 
opening of new streets, the loss of fortunes, taxes, sudden 
deaths, all bring about forced sales. Twenty years is now 
a long time for a family to occupy the same premises. 
The average is less. Under such circumstances there can 
be no permanence — no feeling that what is builded up 
will not soon be pulled down — and, consequently, there 
is no faith in the stability of the home. That is perhaps 
generally true of all large cities, but it is peculiarly true 
of New York in its chronic state of rebuilding. Few there 
are who can stand still or find a permanent anchorage in it. 
So it is that within the quietest of domestic circles 
there is more or less of uneasiness. The restlessness 
percolates brick and stone up town, as well as steel and 
cement down town. People keep pacing up and down, 
mentally, if not physically; and the nervous energy of 
business New York, though it may be subdued, kept 
in abeyance, is nevertheless present at the dinner-table 
of social New York. It is in the air, in the brain, in the 
blood. No one is quite free from it, save those who are 
beyond influences of any kind. 



\ 

v.. 



THE BOWERY 



Pl. XIV. — CHINATOWN 



MWOTAMIHD .VIX ..\^ 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE BOWERY 

Everyone knows that New York is now a collection 
of cities, and not merely an aggregation of sky-scrapers on 
the island of Manhattan. Some years ago the parent city 
expanded legally, took in its neighbors and its suburbs, 
and called itself Greater New York. The places that 
were caught in the net were Brooklyn, Long Island City, 
Staten Island, Coney Island, and a baker's dozen of 
villages. The area of the consolidated city is something 
quite starthng; but as yet the consolidation is more on 
the map than in the mind of the average citizen. The 
insular in thought — and they are still a majority — 
keep harking back to the compact squares lying between 
the Battery and the Harlem, keep thinking of that as New 
York, with Brooklyn and beyond, as formerly, a part of 
the suburbs. 

The Manhattan part of the city is, again, a collection 
of towns, if we divide by settlements and races. Every 
New Yorker is more or less familiar with such localities as 
Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Hungary; with such 
quarters as the French, the Scandinavians, or the Syrians 

239 



240 THE NEW NEW YORK 

occupy; or with the ghettos that seem to spring up and 
multiply everywhere throughout the poorer portions of 
the city. Whenever a nationality gathers in a certain 
place, a reputation and a name attach, neither of them 
perhaps very savory. Unfortunately the foreign elements 
that come to the city in such numbers belong to the impe- 
cunious strata of humanity, and from necessity seek lodg- 
ings each with its own kind. When once located in their 
particular district, race and language continue to hold 
them there. Naturally these birds of a feather give a 
distinct character to their section of the city — a char- 
acter that writers and painters are continually seeking 
to exploit under the name of '4ocal color." 

But there is a broader ethnological division of Man- 
hattan that may be made, and perhaps a more inclusive 
one. The backbone of the island running north and south 
is along Broadway, up Fifth Avenue, through the Central 
Park. This is the elevated portion of the island, where the 
cleanly, comfortable, well-to-do New Yorkers live — this 
is Upper New York. On both sides of this central ridge, 
sloping away toward the rivers, are depressed districts 
where people of an entirely different kind are brought 
together. These are the East and the West Sides where 
the tenement-houses spread over many blocks, where the 
foreign elements congregate, where the vicious and the 
unfortunate, the honest and the dishonest, the decent and 
the indecent, the law-abiding and the criminal, are all 




Pl. .53. — The liowKiiv 



THE BOWERY 241 

brought together by the gravity of circumstance — this is 
Nether New York.^ 

The division Kne between the Upper and the Nether 
city is rather sharply drawn. A step down from the ridge, 
a block or so away from Broadway, and you are in what 
used to be called "the slums." Here is the violent con- 
trast once more, a contrast not merely between fine 
business blocks and ramshackle tenements, or between 
the well-to-do and the poverty-stricken; but between a 
house and a haunt, between cleanliness and dirt, between 
healthful quarters and the disease-breeding sweat-shops. 
The distinction is so positive, the difference so wide, that 
it can hardly be exaggerated. The opposite poles of 
humanity are likewise represented. The gap between the 
highest intelligence and social rank and the lowest animal 
existence seems reduced to a matter of a few streets. 
Over the edge of what the cosmopolitan enthusiast 
regards as little less than heaven, comes up the reek and 
the roar of that other place which the settlement workers 
regard as little better than a place of torment. 

However, it is safe to say that many of the dwellers 
on the East Side do not consider their quarters so infernal 
as the Upper New Yorkers think them. They are not in 
continuous torment, otherwise they would not stay there. 
True enough, they have not the comforts that go with life 

* Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer first made this distinction. See The 
Century Magazine, Vol. 27, p. 546. 



242 THE NEW NEW YORK 

on Fifth Avenue, but then people do not miss what they 
know nothing about. Besides, they have a Fifth Avenue 
of their own in which they are, perhaps, just as happy. 

The Fifth Avenue of the East Side is the Bowery. 
Everyone knows the Bowery, because for years the maga- 
zine writers and illustrators have been making copy out of 
it. It has been regarded by some as the freak street of 
the town, — the place where one goes to laugh at the absurd 
and the queer, or to get sociological statistics in exagger- 
ated form. Society used to go there, and to its tributary 
streets, some years ago on slumming expeditions. It 
does so still, and comes back to its up-town home better 
satisfied, perhaps, with its own quarters. Settlement 
workers and Charity Organization people go there, too; 
and some of them stay there to help better the social 
conditions. Besides these there are scores of the morbidly 
curious who visit the street seeking they know not what, 
and gaining only a dismal impression. All told, there are 
many different impressions brought up from the Bowery 
and its runways by different people. 

Perhaps the most prevalent feeling among the visitors 
is pity for those who move along the wide thoroughfare — 
pity that they are so circumstanced, that they can know 
no better or higher life. Yet it is an open question 
if those who live on the Bowery or its tributaries, are 
really to be pitied, are really so badly off. They do 
not look so very doleful as one meets them on the street. 



THE BOWERY 243 

Beyond a doubt there are misery and misfortune, crime 
and vagrancy, through the haunts of the East Side ; but 
they are not very apparent on the Bowery. Still the street 
is not so wildly gay nor its habitues so violently lively as 
they have been painted. There are gray faces there, faces 
that look lost or homeless or out-of-work. It is the 
thoroughfare of many thoughtlessly mirthful or genuinely 
happy working people, but it is also the beat of the weary, 
the friendless, the outcast, the dissipated, the submerged. 
All classes are there — tradespeople, clerks, mechanics, 
truckmen, longshoremen, sailors, janitors, politicians, 
peddlers, pawnbrokers, old-clothes men, with shop-girls, 
sewing-women, piece workers, concert-hall singers, chorus 
girls. And all nationalities. It is one of the most cos- 
mopolitan streets in New York. The Italians come into 
it from Elizabeth Street, the Chinese from Pell and Doyers 
streets, the Germans from beyond Houston Street, the 
Hungarians from Second Avenue,, and the Jews from 
almost everywhere. Every street coming up from the 
East River may bring in a separate tale. Taken with a 
liberal sprinkling of Russians, Poles, Rumanians, Ar- 
menians, Irish, and native Americans from the west, 
north, and south, they make a much mixed assemblage. 
But there is no great variety of hue in it. The prevailing 
dress is rather somber, as well as frayed or shiny with 
wear. Occasionally a butterfly from the theater sails 
by; but the Bowery is not Fifth Avenue, nor even Mott 



244 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Street, in color-gayety. Sometimes one is disposed to 
think it a sad street. 

What brings these people to the Bowery? Why, the 
same thing that draws the crowd in Upper New York to 
Fifth Avenue or Twenty-Third Street or Broadway. They 
are out shopping, or strolUng, or gossiping, or meeting 
acquaintances, or bent on business. Why not ? Human- 
ity is very much the same in all circles and classes. The 
East Side does not live out of a pushcart exclusively. 
Occasionally it wants a better quality of food or clothing. 
Then it goes up to the Bowery and comes face to face with 
the cheap store. There it usually gets swindled, for the 
poor quality of the goods makes them dear at any price ; 
but then they are ^'in style." And be it remembered that 
the style of the Bowery is just as invincible and om- 
nipotent to the East Sider as that of Fifth Avenue to 
the Upper New Yorker. In fashion, as in life, there is 
nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. As for 
the cost, it is the plain penalty of the thinking, wherever 
you go or buy. 

But the Bowery is a great shopping street, nevertheless. 
Almost everything is purchasable there. Old-clothes 
men, with pushcarts in the gutter, sell boots, stockings, 
shirts, hats ; peddlers trail along the curb hung deep with 
shoestrings and suspenders, or carrying trays of collar 
buttons and neckties; banana howlers and stale-straw- 
berry venders address the second-story windows with 



THE BOWERY 245 

yells; the sidewalk showcase, presenting women's 
garments, toilet articles, knick-knacks, and cheap orna- 
ments, has its attendant "puller-in" who will sell you 
everything in the case ''at a bargain"; and the cheap 
stores are bulging with polite managers who meet one at 
the door and leave no word unsaid that will induce an 
exchange of goods for money. 

The store on the Bowery is unique in both its quantity 
and quality. There always seems to be an overstock of 
shirts, shoes, and trousers. Presumably the clothing 
that has been rejected from the Upper city because of 
waning styles, eventually finds its way to the Bowery, 
and is sold for what it will bring. How otherwise can one 
account for neckties at five cents and shirts at twenty 
cents, or trousers and shoes from seventy-five cents up? 
Everything is ''marked down." The jewelry shops offer 
things at prices that compel attention. The seaman 
ashore or the countryman at sea cannot resist the allure- 
ment ; besides, the "puller-in" usually warrants everything 
for an indefinite number of years. His next-door neighbor, 
the pawnbroker, — there are half a dozen on almost every 
block, — is also a perfectly reliable gentleman who pro- 
motes trade wholly to his own effacement and merely 
as a friend of the wandering stranger. Perhaps there is a 
shade more of affability about his take than his give; 
but then, of course, he has to live, poor soul. 

The pawnshops and the second-hand establishments 



246 THE NEW NEW YORK 

come as near to the department store as anything the 
Bowery can offer. Ahnost anything can be had in them, 
from revolvers and musical instruments to furniture, 
crockery, and hardware. The articles have a battered 
look, but the average East Sider has gotten used to such 
appearances, having been hustled and elbowed himself 
most of his life. Yet he and his wife sometimes buy 
shrewdly enough and beat down the price to the last sylla- 
ble of allotted patience. Money does not always come 
and go here with a Fifth Avenue freedom. Eventually 
it passes, but perhaps grudgingly, reluctantly. In the 
day's work quite a volume of business is done. It is not 
that of Broadway or Twenty-Third Street. There are 
no huge stores with their enormous sales ; but for all 
that there is in the aggregate a good deal of buying and 
selling on the Bowery. 

And, too, there is the same restless push and rush here 
as elsewhere in the city. The restaurants on the Bowery 
are striking epitomes of the New York rush. ''Quick 
Lunch" is advertised almost everywhere, and carried 
out strictly according to programme. Your order is not 
infrequently yelled across the dining room, or roared down 
a dumb-waiter ; and when it comes in, it is skidded off a 
tray and on to the table without preface or apology. 
Usually it is not a bad lunch. The prices asked make the 
squeamish visitor entertain notions of stale vegetables, 
"chuck" steaks, and over-ripe fruits; but the regular 




Pi.. .")4. Ele\ati:d Ru.\d on the Bowery 



THE BOWERY 247 

habitue of the Bowery has no qualms about them. He 
eats and comes to no harm thereby. And he drinks 
Hungarian or Itahan wines, or lager beer, and apparently 
comes to no great harm by them either. The cafes 
peculiar to the different nationalities are more centrally 
located in their various districts; but the Bowery is 
cosmopolitan enough to have all things for all men, from 
chop suey to goulash, and from stale beer to fine grades of 
Voslauer Goldeck. 

And what amusement the Bowery furnishes to its 
easily amused people ! The different races, the street 
types such as the pushcart man, the hawker, the puller- 
in, the gay girl, the flashy young man, the sailors in twos 
and threes, and the countryman in ones, are all amusement 
to the crowd. When it tires of these, it gathers in front of 
a dog-and-bird store, and watches with infinite zest puppies 
in the window quarreling about a bone, or guinea pigs 
milling about in a little pen, or canary birds, singing them- 
selves sore in the throat, in a dirty little wooden cage. 
Anywhere along the Bowery there are superior induce- 
ments off'ered to see all the splendors of the world in a 
peep show for the reasonable sum of one cent. And 
many there be who look therein to witness such things 
as never were on land or sea. The shooting gallery, the 
museum of anatomy, and the snake show come higher 
but are worth more, being in their nature educational. 
The ''barker" on the outside, who announces the 



248 THE NEW NEW YORK 

wonders to be seen, tells you all about this. He and his 
twin brother of the vaudeville or concert hall know what 
to say to attract attention. And they are experts at 
handling a crowd. They keep talking to the accompani- 
ment of a blaring phonograph or a cheap German band 
or an orchestrion — anything to make a noise — and 
during the confusion tickets are sold, and the people are 
pushed in at the entrance. 

In the theaters the prevailing language corresponds 
to the supporting constituency. The old Bowery Theater 
that once housed traditions of the English stage with the 
elder Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Charlotte Cushman, 
still stands to-day, but it now belongs more to the He- 
brew than to the American, and performances are given 
there in German or Yiddish oftener than in English. At 
the side of it is the popular Atlantic Gardens, where vaude- 
ville, music, beer, and the German language are largely 
provided each night. Farther up town is the Irving 
Place Theater, once more devoted to Germans; and as 
high up on Madison Avenue as Fifty-Eighth Street there 
is still another German theater. The language seems to 
prevail on the East Side. Not but what there are other 
tongues. The Italians crowd into the Teatro Italiano 
on the Bowery, as the Chinese into the queer little 
theater on Doyers Street, or the Irish into Miner's ; but 
there is always someone at your elbow who speaks Ger- 
man, or some kindred dialect. In other quarters of the 




Pl. 55. — Across the Bowery looking East 



THE BOWERY 249 

city there are colonies where one hears only Syrian, Greek, 
Russian, Rumanian, Hungarian; but on the Bowery, 
though all nationalities meet and talk each its own 
language, there is, aside from English, a preponderance 
of German and Yiddish. 

The babel of tongues makes more of a noise than one 
would imagine. There are four lines of street cars running 
up the Bowery, besides the roaring elevated overhead and 
innumerable vans, trucks, beer wagons, delivery wagons, 
and pushcarts rattling over pavements and through side 
streets. If the mob would make itself heard, it must shout 
above this din of traffic. As a result, almost everyone 
there speaks explosively, talks much with his hands, and 
expresses acceptance or dissent with his head. At the 
Chatham Square end of the Bowery, where the elevated 
makes a junction with its Second Avenue line, the uproar 
is increased. The crowd presses closely to hear what the 
patent-medicine fakir is saying, the policeman bends over 
with his hand on your shoulder to get your question, the 
''puller-in" drags you into his store and shuts the door 
to hear his own voice. The Bowery is a noisy, reverberat- 
ing street. The roar of tongues and traffic is always rising 
from it. 

Quite different, all this, from two hundred years ago. 
Then the wide thoroughfare was a country road running 
out to the farms (bouweries) of the wealthier Dutch 
settlers of Manhattan; and the Stuyvesants, Beeckmans, 



250 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and others in square-toed shoes trudged along it, perhaps 
with guns on their shoulders for protection against In- 
dians. Afterward the road was extended the whole 
length of the island — the first one of its kind — and in 
time it became the old post-road leading into New Eng- 
land. With the British occupation of the city, camps 
were established along it. Several drinking-places sprang 
up in the neighborhood of the camps, and the evil of 
them, say the temperance people, has persisted on the 
street to this day. No doubt the saloon's line of descent 
has remained unbroken from those times to these, but 
the British soldiery should not be unduly blamed for 
it. There are quite as many saloons on Seventh and 
Eighth avenues as on the Bowery, and they are all of 
pure enough American ancestry. 

But the saloon is about the only thing on the Bowery 
that has persisted. Everything else, except the cor- 
rupted name, has faded out. The Bowery Boy is now 
merely a tradition, and yet he came and went in our own 
time. The old volunteer fire department, of which he was 
part and parcel, brought him into existence. He ran with 
his particular engine, and fought with his particular gang 
— fought other gangs with perhaps more vim than fires. 
He was in some sort of a row almost daily ; if not on the 
street, then in the gallery of the old Bowery Theater, 
where his face and his fist were always sufficient passport. 
He was a picturesque ''tough" with an original vocabulary 




Pl. 5ti. — Jewish Ckmf.tehy (near Howeky) 



THE BOWERY 251 

and a variegated costume ; and everyone, even Thackeray, 
found him an amusing study. 

The Bowery Boy went out with the trees that used to 
hne the historic roadway, and has been succeeded by the 
bad young man of more or less foreign extraction, with 
nothing distinctive about him except his cheapness and 
his vulgarity. Many of the older types and characters 
that bartered and sold on the Bowery have passed on, too. 
They have been driven out, drowned out by the wave of 
foreigners that has inundated the East Side in the last 
dozen years. Nothing lasts for any length of time in this 
new Western Continent. New York is its representative 
city in this respect, and in it all things — homes, build- 
ings, people, streets, the Bowery as well as Broadway — 
are swept along in a shifting panorama of change. 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 



Pl. XV. - BLEECKER STREET 



T33«T2 «3>1033Ja VX .j^ 



CHAPTER XV 

THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 

As one goes down the side streets leading from the 
Bowery to the East River — almost any one of them will 
furnish illustration — he notices many and increasing 
changes. The buildings are usually of brick with perhaps 
stone or terra-cotta trimmings, not small in proportions 
nor mean in entrances, but marred in appearance by 
many iron fire-escapes that descend in flights to the street. 
The fire-escapes are often littered with sorry-looking 
clothing, boxes, or cans; the blinds and doorposts are 
grimy with finger marks, the windows are dirty and often 
broken, and the steps and areaways are worn smooth with 
the shuffle of many feet. The streets are just as wide, and 
cleaned perhaps as often as the other streets of the city, 
but there are rows and rows of pushcarts that occupy the 
gutters, and the refuse from them makes the streets 
appear unkempt and uncared for. 

Business after its kind goes on here as elsewhere, all sorts 
of shops are open, trucks rumble over the pavements, 
people come and go with bundles and baskets. And there 
is the same crowding and huddling of people as on Broad- 

255 



256 THE NEW NEW YORK 

way, — only more so. The East Side is possibly the most 
congested district in the world. Figures are forthcoming 
from sociologists to show how many hundreds Uve on a 
block, or how many thousands live in a square mile of 
these tenements; but the passer-by does not need the 
figures. He can see for himself some thousands, at least, 
without leaving the curb. In warm weather the doorways 
exude humanity, and the windows fairly bulge with people. 
The protrusions of heads, arms, and elbows seem forced 
by the pressure of people from within. The fire-escapes 
and roof lines and cellar-areas hold their quota again. 
As for the streets, they are always full of half-grown 
children, while the sidewalks are more or less strewn with 
crawling babies. The stranger steps over them, and is 
lucky if he does not step on them. Always and every- 
where are children, children, children. 

The cross-streets running parallel with the Bowery — 
Orchard, Ludlow, Allen, Catherine, Market, or almost any 
other in that region — are even worse than the side streets. 
Along them there are rows and rows of three-story build- 
ings, with shops below and tenement quarters above, all 
somewhat the worse for wear, all hung with fire-escapes, 
all crowded and overflowing. Even the cellars are 
sometimes occupied for living quarters in defiance of 
law. Occasionally there is an alley or small court that 
runs back or across the rear of the buildings, with its accu- 
mulation of rubbish and wretched out-houses where 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 257 

children play, and women sit, and thieves have their 
runways and hiding-places. 

These are the tenements, where people gather by the 
scores in small, ill-ventilated rooms, and ply the sewing- 
machine, making cheap clothing. Men, women, and chil- 
dren work in these sweat-shops, eat there, sleep there. 
On almost every floor is the common hallway where 
people wash. Nothing is private. The inhabitants are 
tenants in common of all the liberty and all the license 
of the tenement. 

In such rookeries, where dozens of families live in the 
same nest and each one is in the other one's way, there is a 
continual round of evil communication, foul talk, thieving, 
brawls, fights, and often murders. The respectable poor, 
cast there by temporary loss of work perhaps, begin to feel 
the contamination at once. In the acceptance of charity 
they lose self-respect, and, possibly, in a short time they 
are pauperized — quite willing to be helped and taken 
care of by others. The next step is vagrancy, with its 
attendant evils. Drink takes the place of food with 
the men and women, the young girls become depraved, the 
children frequent the alleys and the gutters rather than 
the schools. Degeneracy is swift and demoralization 
sure. It is almost impossible to uphold decency in such 
circumstances. 

Then comes in disease to lend an added horror to the 
scene. Tuberculosis is in the lead; and all the train of 



258 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ills contingent upon insufficient food, bad sanitation, foul 
air and evil habits, follow after. The small children bear 
the brunt of the attack, or rather they succumb to it ; but 
all classes feel it. In the winter, crowded in. small, ill-venti- 
lated rooms for warmth, pneumonia ferrets them out ; in 
summer, with the heat puffing in at the windows and 
the buzz of flies in the air, they are victims of intestinal 
troubles. Such a combination of miseries, such a welter of 
poverty, crime, and disease, make the well-to-do shudder, 
the charitable over-sympathetic and perhaps over-zealous, 
and the sociologists and settlement workers indignant. 
And not without cause. 

This is not the place to thresh out the question of the 
tenements, and yet one cannot jump over it or push around 
it in a search for the picturesque or the commercial in New 
York. It comes up insistently with a " What can be done 
to stop the misery?" The charity organizations and the 
settlement workers have given answer, but it is not an 
altogether satisfactory answer. The substance of it is. 
Help the tenement dwellers to get on their feet, help them 
to get work, to live better, to be better mentally, morally, 
physically. Unfortunately, that is what a great many 
of them — the paupers, the vagrants, the criminals — do 
not want and will not have. Reclamation is something 
that even the socialist becomes pessimistic over at times. 
The outlook there is not encouraging. 

Mr. Robert Hunter, a man of much experience, rather 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 259 

insists that government do its duty and provide properly 
for the children, the sick, the crippled, the criminal, and 
also those in poverty. As regards the crippled and the 
helpless, whether old or young, everyone will agree that 
Mr. Hunter's remedy is the right one. For those who 
are merely pauperized or poverty-stricken perhaps the 
remedy is objectionable for no other reason than because 
it helps humanity. It is doubtful if people can be helped 
without harm resulting therefrom. A crutch is a con- 
venient thing to lean upon, but how quickly it takes the 
place of a leg and renders the latter useless. What gov- 
ernment has already done in schoolhouses, hospitals, 
almshouses, penitentiaries, Mr. Hunter deems insufficient. 
He would improve and better them, extend their scope 
and inclusion, make them more effective and — comfort- 
able. There it is again. Making things comfortable for 
people is to cripple their own exertions toward the same 
end. Carry their burdens, and they will let you carry 
to the end of the chapter. 

Mr. Riis, another man of much experience with the 
slums and the tenements, has a different remedy. He 
would abolish the tenements, erect new and sanitary 
buildings with light and air, give the East Side family 
a chance at privacy and a home, and the children more 
schools, parks, and playgrounds. He insists that the 
tenement is the root of the evil, that it is badly constructed, 
ill-ventilated, a hot-bed of crime and disease. He is quite 



260 THE NEW NEW YORK 

right about the hot-bed, but is the building alone to 
blame? The same buildings housed respectable fami- 
lies in old New York fifty years ago, but there came 
from them neither murders nor contagions. Up town in 
the New York of to-day one finds scores of apartment- 
houses where there are small, half-dark bedrooms, opening 
on narrow air-shafts, where people live (and pay high 
rents for the privilege) ; but again they do not produce 
crime or disease. Moreover, it should be noted that the 
situation has been greatly improved in the last five years 
by new tenements that are better types of housing in 
respect to light, ventilation, and general sanitary condi- 
tions, in conformity to new laws; but the East Side re- 
mains practically the East Side.^ Is it the tenement that 
is so very bad, or is it the crowding of the tenants that 
produces the evil? If the East Side populace were 
transferred to the Central Park, with the blue sky only 
for a roof and fresh air all around, there would still crop 
out disease and crime from overcrowding. The military 
camp, and that too under strict discipline, often proves 
as much. 

The pleas for better homes, family privacy, children's 
playgrounds, more sunshine — in short, better living and 

' The tenants in the new model tenements are chiefly American, 
German, English, Scotch, Irish, French, and Scandinavian. The Russians, 
Poles, Greeks, Sicilians, Jews, Slovaks, who are so largely responsible for 
the crowding of the East Side, apparently do not care for the improved 
conditions. 




I'l. r>7. — Texe.mkxts nkak Brooklyn Biudge 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 261 

greater comfort — are, however, well made. A better 
living should be provided. But neither the charitably- 
disposed, nor the landlord, nor the city government, 
should provide it. The tenant should maintain himself 
and his family. Adversity is often galling, depressing, 
exhausting; but the breadwinner who emerges from it 
does so with more self-respect, a stronger will, a greater 
confidence, than ever. It is the making of the man. 

But self-help, it is well argued, is not possible for all 
those on the East Side — not possible at least within 
the city's limits. There are over a hundred thousand 
tenements and over a million of the poorer class of ten- 
ants in New York. There is hardly proper breathing 
space on the island for such a mass, to say nothing of 
comfortable homes and playgrounds. To improve the 
tenements is perhaps a temporary makeshift. And 
besides, it results immediately in a new influx of tenants 
from without to take advantage of the improved con- 
ditions. The line of least resistance, whether it be a 
bread line or pleasant tenement conditions, is sure to be 
followed. The underlying evil of congestion is not even 
scotched. 

To the cry of Mr. Riis, ^'Abohsh the tenements!" 
there may be suggested an alternative. Why not abolish 
the tenants? Not all of them. There must, of course, 
be working people living in the city, and presumably 
there always will be factories to supply a large part of 



262 THE NEW NEW YORK 

them with work, though perhaps they might better be 
located out of the town; but there are certain undesirable 
citizens, masquerading as ''working people," who crowd 
the tenements and congest the city to the danger point, 
who might be eliminated from the problem, by forcing 
them to live elsewhere. Force (not necessarily physical) 
will be necessary, for of their own accord these people 
will not live outside the city. Rapid transit, a decent 
home in the country, plenty of fresh air and sunshine, with 
steady work, have been tried and found to be without 
charm or interest for them. They prefer the crowded 
quarters of the town, with all their vice and squalor and 
misery and crime. 

The undesirable class that should be abolished is the 
criminal, the vagrant, the beggar, the pauper, the man 
who works only when the job is easy and agreeable, and 
the man who insists upon working himself and his family 
to death in the sweat-shops. If these could be forbidden 
the city, a large percentage of the misery, vice, and disease 
of the present tenement would be done away with at 
once. But how is it to be accomplished? 

If there is any virtue in our boasted home rule of 
municipalities, then a city should be able, by law, to ex- 
clude the vagrant and the pauper classes. It might not 
be possible to do this by a threat of prosecution, as some- 
times criminals arc driven out by the police ; but it could 
be done, perhaps by taxation. In Berlin, for instance, 




^;:»-'^<;:.V -- ' ^ 



Pl. 58. — East Rivkk Tknkments 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 263 

the stranger finds, after a ten days' or a two weeks' stop 
in the city, that he is visited by a tax-collector, who insists 
upon his contributing to the municipal purse. This is 
direct taxation, which cannot be levied by our United 
States government, but may be levied by our state or 
city governments. A small specific sum for each person 
coming to live in the city (say, ten dollars or more a 
head, payable upon entrance and punishable by impris- 
onment and deportation if evaded) would not exclude 
the worthy, the capable, and the industrious, but would 
shut out practically the criminal, the vagrant, and the 
pauper classes which now make the slums, and sow the 
city with plague spots, and burden the tax-payer for 
their support. 

Again, it might be possible through the Health De- 
partment to regard the tenements as public nuisances, 
and thus cause their abatement; or by regarding them 
as a menace to the public health, to insist that there be 
only so many people allowed on each city ''block," or in 
each house, or on each floor of a house. There is already 
some prescription of the number of cubic feet of air that 
each tenement-occupant must have; but it is almost 
impossible to prevent its evasion. As soon as the in- 
spector's back is turned, the rooms fill up again with 
''boarders" or "relatives"; and the old crowding goes 
on, even in the newest and most improved tenements. 
Still, it should be possible for the modern city to rid 



264 THE NEW NEW YORK 

itself of its criminal and vagrant classes. As a measure 
of self-protection it is being forced upon the considera- 
tion more and more each day. New York is not bound, 
either in law or in common humanity, to feed, clothe, 
and harbor all the undesirables that steamship lines 
bring to it from abroad. And it is the duty of Congress 
to lend a hand by stopping such people from coming 
into the country in the first place. 

We are now nearer to the gist of the matter. Congress 
with its suicidal laissez-faire policy as regards immigra- 
tion, by permitting Europe to send us any kind of im- 
migrants it pleases, is directly responsible for the over- 
crowded tenements of the city. In round numbers, a 
million immigrants a year arrive at the port of New 
York. Of these fully three-quarters (750,000) are of 
very questionable desirability, to say the least. They 
are Russians, Poles, Bohemians, Lithuanians, Greeks, 
Rumanians, Slovaks, Armenians, Sicilians. They are 
the class that do not go to the farm, but to the city ; and 
if they work at all it is in the sweat-shop, the factory, 
and the mine. They benefit the steamship lines that 
bring them here by some twenty dollars a head ; they 
furnish a cheap unskilled labor for the manufacturer and 
the mine operator ; and they burden and render miserable 
whatever city or community they settle in. Naturally, 
the poorest and most worthless of the 750,000 never get 
any farther than their port of entry — New York. They 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 265 

go over to the East Side and help on the misery there. 
Each year as the crowding increases Charity girds its loins 
and sends forth an extra appeal ; ^ the bread lines are ex- 
tended until the police are forced to break them up ; social- 
ism and anarchy parade, talk, importune, and threaten ; and 
the torrent of woe in the tenements grows wider and deeper. 

Mr. Hunter and others, in intimate touch with condi- 
tions, state that most of the poverty-stricken in the 
cities are foreigners, that ninety-five per cent of the slum- 
dwellers are of foreign birth, and again that over fifty 
per cent of the paupers and the insane are foreign-born. 
The settlement workers practically unite in testimony to 
the effect that the most incorrigible slummers, paupers, 
and vagrants are the Italians and the Jews. The United 
Hebrew Charities keeps reporting something over one 
hundred thousand Jews in New York who are unable to 
supply themselves with the immediate necessaries of life. 
The report if made for the other nationalities put down 
among the undesirables would not be essentially different. 
And on one point all the settlement workers are once 
more practically united. The American-born of this 
foreign parentage is the most vicious criminal of them all. 

So it seems that the city is supporting, not alone its 
own indigent and poverty-stricken, not alone its own 

' New York pays out annually about ten millions of dollars to chari- 
table and helpful institutions. This is done by the city government alone. 
The sum expended by private charity in addition cannot be accurately 
computed. 



266 THE NEW NEW YORK 

paupers and vagrants, but those of other countries that 
are dumped upon New York docks by devil-may-care 
steamship companies. ''We have Russia's poverty, 
Poland's poverty, Italy's poverty, Hungary's poverty, 
Bohemia's poverty — and what other nations have we 
not?" ^ How shall the city ever improve the East Side 
and its tenements with yearly a heavier influx than be- 
fore of just this element? How shall the police cope 
with crime when it keeps increasing with the continued 
coming of these foreign hordes? Once more, it is the 
plain duty of Congress to stop this immigration, or else 
assume the responsibility for it instead of putting it on 
the shoulders of New York. The undesirables should 
be turned back at the entrance of the harbor, if not 
earlier, by United States law. Failing in that, the city 
should close its door and open it only on the payment of 
an admission fee (a suitable tax) that would prohibit the 
worthless element from entering. 

But what are the unfortunates without the gates to do ? 
Where are they to go? They do not like living in the 
country, they are not farmers, they are not even me- 
chanics or good ordinary day-laborers. They have al- 
ways been used to the city and city life. What are they 
to do ? ^ Fortunately, so long as these people remain 

» Hunter, Poverty, p. 262. 

' The reports of the Jewish Agricultural Aid Society, with Baron de 
Hirsch's money behind it, emphasizes, by the poverty of its figures, the 
difficulties of doing anything with the Jews as farmers; the Armenians 




Pl. .59. — Elevated Road on f^ECOND Avenue 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 267 

without the gates, New York does not have to answer 
those questions. It can ignore them. And if it chose 
to fling back savagely, ''Go to the farms and small vil- 
lages and work there, or go back to the country from 
which you came," no one could gainsay either the frank- 
ness nor the justness of the answer. Why should the 
beggar be such a chooser of what he Hkes or dislikes? 
Those who made the United States and those who are 
now upholding the country, native and foreign alike, 
have not asked about the work before them whether 
they liked it or not ; they have taken hold of it and done 
it. No man in this western world does exactly as he 
pleases except this same pauper, vagrant, and criminal. 
It is perhaps time he was compelled to do his duty rather 
than allowed to do his pleasure. 

And a measure of compulsion would do no harm to the 
same class already within the city. There has been 
perhaps too much charity, too much help. Humanity 
is that strange contrary animal which, if one seeks to 
lift it up, will insist upon getting down ; and if pushed 
down, it will insist upon getting up. The pauper and the 
vagrant would not only be a surprise to himself, but a 
benefit perhaps to the town if he were arbitrarily set to 
work on the public streets. Getting for him comfortable 

and Turks and Greeks are peddlers and shop-keepers rather than laborers; 
the Sicilians will work in railways and tunneling, but they prefer city em- 
ployment of a political nature — leaning on a broom in the Street Cleaning 
Department, for instance — if they can get it. 



268 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and convenient jobs, encouraging him to work, helping 
him along by advice, example, and praise — how many, 
many times the settlement workers have reported the 
futility of this ! Why not take a leaf from the experience 
of Berlin? Why not use some compulsion? 

All of which sounds harsh in judgment and seems want- 
ing in sympathy. But why should not one's sympathy 
go out to the just as well as to the unjust? Why not 
sympathize with the city rather than with those who 
would ruin it ? There is no under-dog in the fight. That 
simile is almost always misleading. The only person 
who is holding down the vagrant is himself. Putting him 
upon his feet and giving him a shoulder to lean upon have 
failed most lamentably. Other nations have compelled 
him, out of his own strength, to get upon his feet and 
stand there. There are no such slums as ours in German 
cities; there are no East Sides in Stockholm; there are 
no beggars or vagrants in Switzerland. We might profit 
by their experience. 

Such at least is the feeling of the average person who 
turns this tenement question over and over, seeking an 
answer. It seems almost impossible to help or improve 
conditions by kindness or charity, and one wonders if 
there might not be some virtue in resisting them. A 
city must protect itself or suffer the consequences of 
neglect. New York must do something with its East 
Side. It is not merely an objectionable spot to munici- 




C3 

o 



THE TENEMENT DWELLERS 269 

pal art societies — something that mars the beauty of 
the city — or an item of expense to the tax-payer and 
the charitably disposed ; it is a menace to the public 
health, a prolific source of contagion. Worst of all, it is 
a sink of crime and immorality. It is not creditable to 
New York. It is one of the city's most hideous features, 
one of its most violent and forbidding contrasts. 



CITY GUARDIANS 



pl. XVI. -second avenue 



3UH3VA aH0032 - .IVX .j'^ 



CHAPTER XVI 

CITY GUARDIANS 

When one becomes involved in the tenement problem, 
and sees for himself how the other-half lives, the East Side 
is no longer amusing or attractive. The very poverty, 
squalor, and disorder of it, with the helter-skelter of crazy 
buildings and vivid colors, may be picturesque enough; 
but even the artist cannot be interested in it for long. 
People go there from Upper New York on slumming 
expeditions with the same morbid curiosity that takes 
the people of Nether New York to the Morgue ; but the 
horror of the one is the horror of the other, and a taste 
for either is not healthy. The East Side is a repellent 
place, a place where people die in the attempt to live; 
and perhaps too much has been said about it already. 

And yet there are other dark features of the city that 
are not to be slipped by unmentioned if one would make 
a fair survey and a candid commentary. New York is 
not all atune to the hum of profitable business; pros- 
perity is not obtrusively in evidence everywhere through- 
out its limits. The mere fact that ten people out of every 
hundred among the poor dying within the city limits, are 

T 273 



274 THE NEW NEW YORK 

buried in the Potter's Field — buried three deep at that 

— would give one quite a different notion. 

As intimated some pages back, these poor are not ex- 
clusively of New York growth, not all of home manufac- 
ture. Yet immigration is not to be blamed for everything. 
There is a West Side as well as an East Side, where pau- 
perized Americans live in brick shanties, where negroes 
and poor whites and Irish-Americans gather in forlorn 
quarters, and where poverty, crime, and disease are al- 
most as prevalent as elsewhere in the city. Moreover, 
right through the heart of the Upper City, between the 
two dismal Sides, cuts that Great White Way, which has 
for its high-light the district known as ''The Tenderloin" 

— a feature truly enough American, and not the less of 
a blotch and a patch on the city because illuminated by 
electricity, and made gaudy by the extravagance of the 
foolish. 

To the rural visitor from Olean or Skowhegan ''The 
Tenderloin" at night looks very attractive, is bubbling 
over with mirth, or wildly hilarious with champagne. 
It is "a great sight," and the gay ladies who furnish 
the laughter and help drink the champagne seem to 
lead a charmed life; but when the play is done and 
the curtain falls, the faces under their rouge show any- 
thing but gayety. Many before them have laughed the 
same laughter and gone their way, because "The Ten- 
derloin" has no use for tears; but the "gay time" is 




Pl. ()1. — Police IIkadqiarteks 



CITY GUARDIANS 275 

simulated, and the life itself is just as hideous after its 
kind as any to be found in the dens of the hopeless or 
the dives of the submerged. 

The Great White Way is the place where the rapid 
career usually begins, and the East Side is often the place 
of its ending. For the processes of degeneracy may 
finally land the one-time habitue of ''The Tenderloin"" 
into the pitiless precincts of the Bowery, or the darkness 
of the Mott Street opium-joints. ''The Tenderloin" is 
always full of evil promise. Here is where crime is born 
and brought to maturity. Here is where the police throw 
out their first drag-net for the defaulter, the embezzler, 
the forger, the well-dressed thief. Most of the race-track, 
the pool-room, the bucket-shop people belong here; and 
confidence men, badger-game men, with pickpockets 
and ordinary swindlers, are always in its ofTmg, keeping 
a weather-eye open for prey. The gay ladies sooner or 
later become the stool-pigeons of the swindlers and help 
them in their hawking. Such criminals as these seem 
more cunning than brutal, but perhaps they are more 
dangerous for that very reason. The police have to keep 
them on the blotter all the time. "The Tenderloin" 
is perhaps under stricter surveillance than the Bowery 
and its purlieus. 

And yet on the surface New York, both Upper and 
Nether, seems to be a well-ordered, law-abiding city. 
The stranger who strolls along the avenues, or even 



276 THE NEW NEW YORK 

through the ill-reputed Sides, meets with no overt act 
of lawlessness, sees no murders or robberies, hears no 
disturbances, knows no horrors. But each year there 
are something over one hundred and seventy-five thou- 
sand prisoners brought to the bar in the various police 
courts of the city. They are not all charged with steal- 
ing, though the loss of property reported at the police 
stations through burglaries amounts to fifteen or twenty 
millions a year. There are among the prisoners many 
thugs, yeggmen, whyos, up for criminal assault; many 
members of gangs that belong on the Bowery, or Cherry 
Street, or in Harlem, Or along the far avenues, arrested 
for ''doing" each other; many hold-up men, long-shore 
crooks, and harbor ruffians, with some blackmailers be- 
longing to the Black Hand or other organizations of 
criminals. Then there are the vagrants, those charged 
with being ''drunk and disorderly," the irresponsible, 
the suddenly insane. Indeed, one hardly knows what 
New York would do if the police were not on hand to 
keep the lawless and the violent in restraint. 

It is generally supposed that the police of a city have 
but one duty to perform, namely, to arrest law-breakers ; 
but the New York police have other things than that on 
their schedule. The department is broken up into many 
divisions, with just as many different functions as there 
are divisions. Aside from the regular patrolmen there 
is the Sanitary Squad, that has to do with enforcing 



CITY GUARDIANS 277 

health regulations; the Traffic Squad, that regulates the 
traffic of the great thoroughfares ; the Court Squad, that 
is in attendance on the courts; the Boiler Squad, that 
examines engines, boilers, and engineers. Then again 
there are squads that do special duty in special places, 
such as the Steamboat, Harbor, Bridge, and Park police ; 
and the picked men that serve along such thoroughfares 
as Broadway or about the railway stations. Wherever 
the place of service, the facilities for swift action and 
concentration of forces are furnished either in horses or 
bicycles or boats or patrol wagons. The police move 
swiftly — too swiftly for the average law-breaker's comfort. 
The bureaus of the department emphasize, again, the 
many functions of the police. For examples, there are 
the Detective Bureau, with its interesting machinery for 
the detection of crime and criminals, and the Bureau of 
Information, which looks up the antecedents of the 
several hundred people each year who are ''found dead" 
in the city, takes charge of and finds out about the youth- 
ful "runaways" who come to the city because tired of 
their home life in the country, returns each year several 
thousand ''lost" children, looks after people run over 
or killed in the city streets, gathers information about 
the unknown suicides. Then there are the License 
Bureau, which has to do with the thousands of applica- 
tions for licenses, the Lost Property Office, where one 
can recover his belongings by proper identification of 



278 THE NEW NEW YORK 

them, the Bureau of Encumbrances, which performs all 
sorts of no man's duties, and the House of Detention, — 
"the prison of the innocent, " — where witnesses are held 
pending trials. 

Again, the police not only patrol the streets, but they 
control crowds, regulate public amusements, help the 
ambulances, stop the fast-driving automobiles, send in 
fire-alarms, act as witnesses, guard the election booths 
and boxes, keep order in the courts, ferret out criminals 
for the District Attorney, haunt the railroad stations 
for arriving crooks, — in short, watch over the whole city 
that it may come to no harm. It has been said that they 
watch the city and the criminal classes to their own 
profit, that they themselves are corrupt and accept 
bribes and hush-money, that they blackmail the saloons, 
the bagnios, and the pool-rooms, growing wealthy out of 
their double dealing. The charge is easily made, since it 
is general and hits no one in particular; and, some- 
times, it is specifically made and proved. It would be 
strange if out of nine or ten thousand men, with almost 
unlimited power in the matter of blackmail, there were 
not some wanting in honesty. What then ! Is the whole 
force ''rotten" in consequence? 

It is true again that occasionally a man is dismissed 
from the force for cowardice ; but who has ever suggested 
that the police as a body were wanting in courage ? As 
they come out of the police-stations in squads of eight 




Pl. i\2. ChIMINAI, (OlKT Bl'ILDINT, 



CITY GUARDIANS 279 

or ten to go on duty, you may notice that practically all 
of them have smooth and young-looking faces, that their 
lips shut close as the jaws of a steel trap, and that their 
chins are often a bit ''under-shot" like bulldogs'. From 
their faces alone you know that the police are not lack- 
ing in courage, that they are not afraid of thief or thug 
or trouble of any kind. 

Have they not proved their bravery again and again ? 
Read the deeds of the honor men who have medals on their 
coat lapels; or read almost any day in the newspapers, 
the stopping of runaways by the mounted police in the 
Central Park, or the perilous rescues at fires. Read 
the annals of the Harbor Squad, and the scores of times 
the police have gone overboard into the floating ice of mid- 
winter to save some poor wretch fallen off a dock in the 
dark. Read the stories of the Bridge Police and their thrill- 
ing adventures with accidents and suicides high up in the 
air above the East River. Even the bicycle men, who hold 
up speeding automobiles, convince one that grit belongs to 
the police either by education or inheritance or tradition. 
A man cannot remain on the force for long without it. 

And when did the police ever run from a mob, or give 
up a prisoner without a fight, or fail to close in on a thief 
because he pointed a pistol? Occasionally a man has 
been outnumbered, or in the face of certain death has 
declined to attack single-handed a band of thugs ; but he 
has usually forfeited his baton and shield, and quit the 



280 THE NEW NEW YORK 

force in consequence thereof. And many a patrolman 
has been killed outright because of being too brave, 
because of attacking against overwhelming numbers/ 

New York is proud of its police force, and keeps re- 
iterating that it is the very '' finest" in all the world — a 
statement that is not modest but has a good deal of truth 
in it. Certainly as one sees the police at the annual parade, 
swinging down Fifth Avenue, six thousand strong, there 
is a feeling that it is an invincible body of men. It marches 
well; it is precise, alert, disciplined. The men may be 
relied upon to obey orders absolutely, and to move, 
attack, and shoot, in case of a riot, as a united body. The 
mob of the future that can stand up before their moving 
columns will have more courage than any of its prede- 
cessors ; and the rescuing party that can break through 
their solid square or marching diamond will need Gatling 
guns to prepare the way. 

The mounted police, moving fourteen abreast, keep the 
line formation quite as well as the foot police. They are 
perfectly drilled, moving each man and horse like a cen- 
taur, each line like a solid column. Even the bicycle 
men and the drivers of the patrol wagons are infused 
with the military spirit. Precision, accuracy, obedience 
are stamped upon them all. Honor to General Bingham, 
who is to be credited with implanting this new spirit in 

'See "The Roll of Honor of the New York Police," by Theodore 
Roosevelt, in The Century Magazine, October, 1897. 



CITY GUARDIANS 281 

the police ! And honor again to the Mayor, who in spite 
of party pressure and partisan virulence has resolutely 
sustained the Commissioner of Police in his office and 
in his work ! 

The present police regime is decidedly of modern 
growth. True enough, there were police in the city from 
the early days, but they were constabulary in nature, 
and no doubt much mocked and little respected by the 
flippant and the ungodly in the community. A record of 
1693, for instance, describes the policeman of that day as a 
gorgeous affair in livery, with shoes and stockings of 
municipal furnishing, and carrying a badge of "ye city 
arms." He must have been a target for the slings and 
arrows of the town, and that is about all. Even so recently 
as 1850 the police of the city were more like bailiffs than 
regulars. They wore no uniform, had a star-shaped 
badge pinned on their coat, and spent most of their 
time sitting on skids and barrels, or leaning against bars 
in the corner saloons. After the Draft Riots they became 
something of a power because moving as a body ; and after 
1886, when they took a strong hand in the street-car strikes, 
they became a force to be feared. Since then they have 
steadily improved in numbers and in discipline, until to- 
day they have the standing of a small army. There are 
over nine thousand men on the force, well-officered, well- 
trained, well-seasoned. New York is very right in being 
proud of its police. 



282 THE NEW NEW YORK 

And also of its firemen. The Fire Department is, again, 
one of the most efficient in the world. It has become so 
through sheer necessity. There are ten fires in New York 
to one in London or Paris, and swiftness in extinguishing 
them is the result of having not only many to extinguish, 
but also of having the best modern machinery in the hands 
of men trained to utilize every possible fraction of time. 
All the fire-fighting men are athletic. This is required by 
the rigid examination antecedent to being enrolled in the 
department. Agility, catlike quickness, strength, are 
indispensable qualities. Practice does the rest. The 
engines (now being superseded by the very successful 
high-pressure system^) are of the latest patterns, the water 
towers are the highest, the hook-and-ladder extensions the 
longest obtainable. Electricity, of course, sends in the 
alarms, rings the gongs, lights the fires in the engines, un- 
snaps the horses. Everything is done with electric speed. 
That there may be no precious minute lost in sending in an 
alarm, there are hundreds of boxes placed in private build- 
ings so that in case of fire it is only necessary to pull down 
a hook, and an engine will be there in perhaps two minutes. 

* The High Pressure or Salt Water Service, by which name it is popu- 
larly known, has boon in most successful operation since July, 1908. " It 
is capable of pumping at the rate of fifty million gallons of water in twenty- 
four hours, against a pressure of 350 pounds per square inch, and this 
enormous force against which no imaginable conflagration could stand, can 
be concentrated at any point within the High Pressure Fire District, and 
made available within two minutes after the alarm of fi^re is given." 
Message of Hon. George B. McClellan, The Mayor, January 4, 1909. 







JjfM 



U,) 






4 L.LI j Mi^iHjwi — ||--p "r- -I'"""* - 




jv^ -. 



Tl. G3. Bkidcje ok Sicjhs (Tumu.s) 



CITY GUARDIANS 283 

Nothing is answered so quickly as a fire call in an Ameri- 
can city. 

There are over four thousand men in the uniformed 
service of the New York Fire Department. In Manhattan 
and the Bronx alone there are eighty-four engine com- 
panies, standing ready night and day, men and horses 
ahke, for the headlong rush to the fire. Just as ready are 
the thirty-five hook-and-ladder companies with their 
extension and scahng ladders. They never know what 
the need or what frightful risk will be asked of them, but 
they go prepared for anything. Along the rivers there are 
fire-boats stationed at different piers — boats that look 
like monitors with brass-nozzled hose mounted like rapid- 
fire guns — standing ready again, night and day, for the 
instant dash up or down the stream to put out dock or 
steamboat fires. The handhng of an emergency with 
swiftness — swiftness above all things — is required of 
every one of them. 

To maintain such an equipment, with its bureaus 
for extinguishing, for preventing, and for investigating 
fire, is, of course, a pretty item of expense. Seven and a 
half milUons was in the budget for 1908 — quite enough to 
make one gasp at our extravagance. But the outlay is 
warranted by the circumstances. The fire losses in New 
York amount to some twelve million dollars a year, and 
the number of fires to something like ten thousand. The 
latter figure generally causes a stranger to throw up his 



284 THE NEW NEW YORK 

hands in horror or despair, and it has been known to give 
many a native a decided shock. It seems almost incredible 
that any city could average thirty fires a day, and still live 
to tell the tale. Yet New York has that record. 

How does it happen? What the cause of these many 
outbreaks of fire ? Whose the fault ? It is said that our 
bad construction is to blame, that we build houses of 
wood that are little more than fire-traps — ''tinder- 
boxes" is the more common term. It is said further 
that the buildings are easily ignited, that they go up 
swiftly ''in puffs of smoke," and that they shower 
sparks like shooting stars on all the neighboring buildings. 
Perhaps there is some truth in that, though there are few 
wooden buildings left in New York, and those built of 
brick and stone differ but little from similar structures in 
London or Paris. As for fire-proof structures, perhaps we 
are better off in respect of them than any other modern 
city. Having learned something from our experiences, 
and much desiring prevention to repetition, there has been 
a decided effort to construct buildings absolutely fire-proof. 
But, taking our buildings at their worst, it is not possible 
that they are ten times more inflammable than those of 
Europe. Yet we have ten times as many conflagrations. 
There is some other reason for so much smoke. How do 
the fires start in the first place ? Perhaps the fire figures 
for the whole United States may help us out, or at least 
prove suggestive. 



CITY GUARDIANS 285 

The destruction of life by fire in this country amounts 
to seven thousand people a year, the destruction of prop- 
erty amounts to two hundred millions a year ; the fighting 
of fire, and the protection from it furnished by insur- 
ance companies, amounts to four hundred millions a 
year. This looks very much like waste caused by 
wanton carelessness. The disregard of consequences, 
the reckless attitude of mind, is, in fact, quite charac- 
teristic of the Americans, and is very speedily adopted 
by the immigrants who come here. By a queer system 
of economics a fire is usually regarded by irresponsible 
people as "a, good thing," either because it gets rid of 
some undesirable building or because it ''gives some poor 
man a job " in erecting a new structure. And in New York 
the majority of the fires are directly due to the irrespon- 
sibles. 

Fifty per cent of the fires originate in the tenements. 
That in itself is significant. Those who have little or 
nothing to lose are generally easy in their minds about 
other people's losses. What difference does it make 
to them if they go out of an evening leaving a red-hot 
stove to take care of itself ; or whether a festival candle is 
placed in a candle-stick or on a straw bed where it is 
almost sure to fall over and cause a conflagration? In 
any event they will not lose much. The landlord, whom 
they usually detest, will have to pay. The almost in- 
credible tale is told that during a recent feast in one of 



286 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the East Side quarters nearly forty alarms of fire were 
sent in in a single afternoon. The carelessness suggested 
by such a stor}^ is simply astounding. 

But New York is held responsible for the acts of its 
masses — foreign as well as native — and has to be pre- 
pared for the foolishness or the recklessness of its citizens. 
Hence the ever ready fire department, and hence the hurry 
and the speed of it. It is all loss, — money and effort 
thrown out to stop greater loss, — and perhaps the only 
phase of it that is at all compensating is the picturesque 
look and the heroic act. These are at times thrilling, en- 
nobling, almost inspiring. 

There is something in an alarm of fire — the clang of 
the gongs, the whistle of the engines, the clatter of 
horses' feet on the pavement, the rumble of the wheels — 
that gives one a thrill. People drop their work and crowd 
to the window or the door to see the engines go by. 
Everybody knows that hollow fire-whistle. The trucks 
and cabs crowd up to the curbs and stand still, the foot- 
passengers keep on the sidewalks, the street cars stop. 
A fire-engine always has the right of way. The horses as 
well as the drivers know that they are to have a clear 
track and, though they are prepared for unwieldy vehicles 
that occasionally block their path, they bowl along at 
great speed. It is a picturesque if common sight in the 
city, — this sweep through the streets of a flashing fire- 
engine, trailing a huge black streamer of smoke behind it, 




Pl. 04. — Site of the New Municipal IIiilding 



CITY GUARDIANS 287 

whistling and clanging, its powerful horses galloping; 
and after it hose wagons, long hook-and-ladder trucks, 
with firemen perhaps hastily putting on rubber coats in 
preparation for action while moving toward the fire. The 
swiftness of it, the swirl of the huge trucks around the 
corners, the occasional skidding on the wet pavements, are 
exciting. Even the disappearance down an avenue or side 
street leaves behind a wonder in the air. Strangers turn 
to ask each other the whereabouts of the fire. Everyone 
is interested. No matter how familiar the sight, it always 
produces a thrill. 

The excitement increases as one nears the fire itself. 
The police have perhaps already made a cordon around it, 
and have the curious pushed back out of the way. En- 
gines on the side streets are spouting smoke, hose carriages 
are running out lengths of hose, ladders are going up 
against the walls, water towers are being elevated. There 
is water in a few minutes, pounding through the hose and 
playing on the flames, which are possibly already leaping 
high in air. Stream after stream is brought to bear from 
different sides, from neighboring houses, from the roof, or 
through the windows. There is the continual crash of 
glass, of falling floors, of crumbling walls, with the roar 
of the flames, the swish of water, the shouts of the mob 
and the men. 

And always danger for the firemen. No one knows 
when or how it may develop. The pent-up gas within the 



288 THE NEW NEW YORK 

building may blow out the walls and bury a whole ladder- 
ful; the men may be overcome and suffocated by smoke, 
even though crawling along the floor for air and following 
the fire hose out; they may be caught in the dreaded 
back-draft and singed almost to a cinder before it passes. 
These are just the usual risks of the New York fireman and 
are accepted as a matter of course. But occasionally 
there arises for him a more direful emergency — the 
necessity of risking his life to save others. And here the 
fireman is not only a superb life-saver but frequently a 
self-sacrificing hero in the bargain. 

Often enough, the man or woman at the window or 
on the roof top, cut ofT by the flames, appealing to be 
saved, is economically not worth the saving; often the 
crippled or the bed-ridden overlooked in the hurried flight 
and left behind in the house are, economically again, 
not worth risking young lives for ; but no thought of that 
sort enters the fireman's mind. All alike are human to 
him and he must save them. Extension ladders go up, 
scaling ladders carry the men from story to story, window 
ledges and cornices are crept along, rooms black with 
smoke are traversed, the helpless are brought out and 
lowered to safety, and perhaps, as the walls fall in, the 
firemen drop into the safety-nets more dead than alive. 
It is a common story. 

Still more wonderful are the rescues made by firemen of 
their companions. Perhaps the more adventurous have 



CITY GUARDIANS 289 

been caught on the roof, or have been overcome by smoke 
in rooms, or have fallen with the collapse of a floor into the 
cellar, where, unconscious, they are drowning in pools of 
water. The tales told of these rescues — of human 
bridge building, of swinging from window to window, of 
creeping along lead pipes, of leaps for life — are almost 
unbelievable in their details.^ The things that once took 
place only in romantic fiction are now and here being 
outdone in fact. 

New York has good reason to be proud of its policemen 
and its firemen. There are no deeds of heroism more 
heroic than theirs; and yet, within the ranks, risk and 
danger are considered merely matters of service. Such 
service is not so common, however, that it escapes notice. 
Almost everyone is led to reflect at times upon the model 
municipality that New York might be were all the branches 
of its government as devoted to duty as the departments 
of Fire and Police. 

* See "Heroes who Fight Fire," by Jacob Riis, in The Century Maga- 
zine, Vol. 55, p. 483. 



THE BRIDGES 



Pl. XVll. -HIGH BRIDGE, HARLEM RIVER 



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CHAPTER XVII 

THE BEIDGES 

Wherever a crowd gathers, whether about a fight or a 
fire, a rescue or an accident, there you will find the blue- 
coated policeman. He is usually at the focal point of inter- 
est, wherever and whatever that may be. He has to uphold 
and preserve the majesty of the law; and, incidentally, 
he has to make the crowd "move on " or "stand back." 
This he usually succeeds in doing without force or display 
of any kind. Of course, if word is passed along the line to 
"clear the square," at an open-air meeting of the Reds, for 
instance, he and his companions do it very expeditiously 
and conclusively. His force is a persuasive one. And 
the mob, whether guilty or innocent of any misdemeanor, 
knows enough to keep out of the way of his locust stick. It 
is a very hard club. The end of it thrust into a running 
back is quite as effective as the length of it laid on a 
stubborn head. 

And what crowds to cope with there are in New York ! 
The city seems always alive with people. On New Year's 
nights the sidewalks overflow into the streets, and the great 
thoroughfares like Broadway turn into torrents of shouting, 

293 



294 THE NEW NEW YORK 

horn-blowing, confetti-throwing people. On Easter Day 
or Labor Day or the Fourth of July there is a similar empty- 
ing of the houses into the streets. People are always 
wilHng to go out ''to see something/' and when out they 
are easily drawn into and help swell a crowd. Everyone 
knows how they gather from all points of the compass in a 
pubUc square to hear some agitator or poHtician speaking 
from a cart tail, or how they flock to "the game" at the 
Polo Grounds, thirty thousand or more, and spend half a 
day perched contentedly on benches, banks, bridges, and 
distant housetops. 

The largest gatherings are seen only at political or 
military parades or at some important public function. 
The Dewey Celebration and its hke, the processions 
preceding national elections, even the fire and police 
parades, bring out vast numbers of spectators. The 
people of the East and West Sides come flocking through 
the side streets to Fifth Avenue, where they occupy the 
stoops, climb railings, windows, trees, lamp-posts, to get 
a sight of what is moving. The processions themselves 
are often enormous aggregations of individuals. In 
December, 1905, there was a Jewish parade (a protest 
against the massacres of Jews in Russia) that is said to have 
contained 125,000 people. It took the better part of the 
day in passing a given point. Such crowds are hardly to 
be imagined. And when seen, the wonder is where the 
people come from, and how they are housed and fed. 



THE BRIDGES 295 

If one is whimsically inclined, he may even wonder as to 
who made all the thousands of Derby hats that are every- 
where in sight. Seen from a window or a balcony of a 
sky-scraper the whole avenue looks paved with black hats. 

But even on days and nights devoid of holiday signifi- 
cance the streets are full of people. There are certain 
places that are always congested. These are the main- 
traveled thoroughfares, the principal avenues, the larger 
cross-streets, the railway stations, the subway and ferry 
entrances, — above all, the bridge entrances. The number 
of people that daily pass between Manhattan and Long 
Island by the bridges is something extraordinary. There 
are nearly 5000 trolley cars a day moving on the Brooklyn 
Bridge alone, and they are generally ''full up" with 
passengers. A moderate estimate gives 200,000 people a 
day passing over this bridge, and in 1907 it ran for a single 
day as high as 423,000 people. The Wilhamsburgh 
Bridge, formally opened last year, though used since 1903, 
accommodates over 200,000 a day ; while the Queensboro, 
opened this year (1909), with a capacity of several hun- 
dred thousand, and the Manhattan, now being finished, 
with an estimated capacity of over half a million a day, 
give an idea of the city's present needs. A million people 
a day moving across the East River bridges is perhaps 
a maximum estimate, but not an extravagant one. No 
wonder the bridges were built of colossal proportions. 

Our foreign friends who smile at our love of ''big- 



296 THE NEW NEW YORK 

ness" as exemplified in bridges and buildings, fail to 
take into consideration the actual demand, the necessity 
of the hour. They know nothing about bridge ''jams/' 
and a million people a day moving across a wide and 
swift river has little meaning for them. As for bridges 
themselves they know the common types such as London 
Bridge and the Pont Neuf. These being sufficiently large 
and serviceable in their places, the conclusion is perhaps 
reached that they would be equally serviceable anywhere 
else on the globe. The measuring of the world by a local 
yardstick is a very common failing of humanity, and one 
that accounts for many mistakes. Neither the Pont Neuf 
nor London Bridge would reach halfway across the East 
River. By comparison with what is needed in New York, 
and what now exists, they are merely enlarged culverts. 
They could hardly accommodate the Brooklyn crowd that 
goes on foot, to say nothing of the teams, trolleys, and 
electric cars. The East River bridges are none too large, 
yet they are the largest in the world. No other city has 
one bridge of this scale, where New York has four and will 
soon have more. 

This being merely a fact and not a boast, why should we 
not state it whenever necessary? Of course, we do talk 
unnecessarily and unceasingly about our ''big" things, 
even when they have no quality and mean nothing but a 
row of figures; yet there are things of magnitude and 
worth in the United States that cannot be understood 



THE BRIDGES 297 

unless we deal in figures. For instance, the Canyon of 
the Colorado is a slash in the earth over a mile deep, 
thirteen miles in width, several hundred miles in length; 
and the slash is filled with the most beautiful air and 
color ever seen anywhere in the world. Why should we 
not tell the tale with those figures and with the superla- 
tive adjective? How could it be told differently? Just 
so with the stupendous volume of Niagara, the great body 
of the fresh-water lakes, the vast prairies, the huge trees, 
the giant forests. The very "bigness" of these things 
is perhaps their telling quality. It gives them distinc- 
tion, grandeur, even sublimity. To talk about them with 
a mock-modest air, as though giant redwoods grew on 
every hillside, and Niagaras roared in every river, and 
Colorado canyons were after all very common affairs, 
would be absurd. They are world wonders, and why should 
we not say as much without either pride or humility ? 

It is precisely so with the four bridges across the East 
River. Their ''bigness" is not only a necessity, but it 
is also their commanding feature. Mere bulk, length, 
weight, and height give them grandeur. No one who 
goes across them, or sees them from the river, or studies 
them from some Manhattan sky-scraper, can fail to be 
impressed by them. Yet even then, with the mind 
expanded and grown colossal by contemplation, the true 
measure of them is perhaps not appreciated. 

The earliest one, the Brooklyn Bridge, was opened for 



298 THE NEW NEW YORK 

traffic in 1883, and since then upwards of fifty million 
people a year have continuously passed over it in cars 
alone. It is one of the most famous of the suspension 
bridges, with stone towers 272 feet in height, a central span 
of 1595 feet, and a lift above the water of 135 feet. Its 
total length is 5989 feet, something over a mile. It has 
promenades for foot-passengers, two roadways for vehicles, 
and two railway tracks for electric cars. 

Enormous as this bridge was when first built, and 
spectacular as it still appears, it is outdone in size by the 
Williamsburgh Bridge, sometimes called '^ Bridge No. 2." 
This is another suspension affair, but of quite a different 
appearance from the first bridge. It has steel towers 325 
feet in height, a central span of 1600 feet, and a total 
length of 7200 feet. Since its opening it has carried im- 
mense crowds. When the cars for it are in running order 
they will transport 200,000 people a day and in emer- 
gencies 125,000 people an hour. In its 118 feet of width 
it has four surface railway tracks, two elevated tracks, 
two carriage ways, two promenades, and two bicycle paths. 

Yet this bridge is once more surpassed in size by the 
Queensboro or Blackwell's Island Bridge. It is a canti- 
lever of peculiar design and is regarded as an experiment 
by some and as an unsafe structure by others.^ It has 

• Expert engineers have reported that it will not carry more than 
about half the load contemplated, that the superstructure of it weighs 
twenty-five per cent more than it should, and that it will cost twenty-five 
per cent more than was bargained for. In many ways it seems the bridge 
is not the success that was anticipated. 



THE BRIDGES 299 

four trolley tracks, two elevated railway tracks, besides 
footpaths and carriage ways, and its capacity is 125,000 
passengers an hour. It crosses the East River between 
Fifty-Ninth Street and Long Island City in three spans, 
resting on Blackwell's Island after the first one, and 
making a short span across the island itself. There are 
six rather fine masonry piers, two on the island and two on 
each river bank. The total reach of the bridge is 7636 feet. 
The distinction of being the largest cantilever in the world 
(the Forth Bridge has a longer single span) is perhaps needed 
to sustain an interest, for it certainly is not beautiful. It 
seems cumbrous and unnecessarily heavy. 

In sheer weight, however, as in carrying capacity, this 
Queensboro cantilever is exceeded by '^Bridge No. 3," 
or the Manhattan Bridge, now nearly completed. It is 
between the Brooklyn and the Williamsburgh bridges, 
and like them is suspended on enormous ropes of steel. 
Each rope consists of 9472 wires, yq o^ ^^ i^^ch in diameter, 
woven into thirty-seven strands, with an outside diameter 
of 21^ inches. These cables are swung from steel towers 
standing upon granite and concrete foundations that go 
down to bed-rock 100 feet below the mean surface of 
the water. The towers are 345 feet in height, the steel 
in each of them weighs some 6250 tons, and each carries a 
load of 32,000 tons. The anchorage on either shore to 
which the ends of the cables are made fast is another mass 
of granite and concrete, weighing something like 232,000 



300 THE NEW NEW YORK 

tons. It is calculated to resist a pull of, say, 30,000 tons. 
From the main cables, carried by smaller suspender 
cables, is the superstructure, which in weight of nickel-steel, 
including the towers, amounts to 42,000 tons. In the 
main span over the river there is 10,000 tons, and in each 
shore span 5000 tons. 

These figures suggest a bridge of not only great weight, 
but of huge size. It is planned to be the strongest and 
possibly the longest bridge in the world. And this not 
because New York wants to have the "biggest" structure 
in all creation, paying ten or more millions for that pre- 
tentious distinction, but because it needs a bridge that 
will carry from 300,000 to 500,000 people a day, and carry 
most of them during the "rush" hours.^ It is built to 
stand great strain and to accommodate any crowd, however 
large. To that end there are to be four tracks for ele- 
vated and subway cars, accommodating trains of eight 
and ten cars each, four more tracks for trolleys and 
surface cars on a second floor, besides a roadway thirty- 
five feet wide and two twelve-foot sidewalks for pedes- 
trians. The main span of the bridge is not so long as those 
of the Brooklyn and Williamsburgh bridges, being 1470 
feet to their ICOO; but the approach from the Manhattan 
side is 1940 feet and from the Brooklyn side 4230 feet. 
This makes a total length of 9090 feet, nearly two miles. 

' The maximum carrying capacity is given as 350,000 people an hour 
— 175,000 each way. 



THE BRIDGES 301 

That figure, taken in connection with its width of 120 feet 
(35 feet wider than the Brooklyn Bridge), gives perhaps 
some idea of this stupendous structure of steel swung 
across the East River as easily and as Hghtly as a spider's 
web across a doorway. 

For, notwithstanding its weight and mass, this bridge 
does not look heavy. Apparently it has no rigidity 
about it. It looks as though it might ride out a storm 
by bending before it or swaying with it. Its grace and 
its feeling of elasticity come from its fine bending lines. 
The city planned for the beauty of the structure as well 
as for its usefulness. Mr. Hastings, the architect, has 
personally had its decoration on his hands and con- 
science for a long time. No doubt this has meant much 
in matters of detail. The main beauty of the bridge, 
however, lies in its lines — the graceful droop of its 
cables over its upright towers. 

The Brooklyn Bridge also has this grace of line and deli- 
cate tracery against the sky. The towers are well-propor- 
tioned masses of masonry, but when built they were de- 
nounced by many for their pike-staff plainness. They 
were thought "ugly" because not ornamented with mould- 
ings, or divided up by stringcourses of protruding stone. 
In fact, the whole bridge was considered something of a 
monstrosity, and spoken of at that time very much as our 
sky-scrapers are scoffed at to-day. But, fortunately, the 
bridge has existed long enough to win over many of those 



302 THE NEW NEW YORK 

who thought it monstrous ; and the newer generation has 
come to regard it as one of the city's most beautiful 
features. It has grown gray in service, having been used 
twenty-five years ; and is now spoken of as 'Hhe old Bridge." 
Perhaps some of its attractiveness has come with age, 
and then, perhaps again, it was just as beautiful the day it 
was completed, and we have merely grown up to it. 

We shall fit ourselves quickly to the Manhattan Bridge, 
in fact, we have done so already; but shall we ever come 
to think the Williamsburgh Bridge so graceful as the two 
lower ones on the river? Its cables fall in curves, but 
they seem not free, flowing lines. There is no illusion of 
swaying movement about it, no delicate tracery against 
the sky. Instead there is the feeling of uncompromising 
rigidity. The steel towers look not unlike oil derricks ; 
and the superstructure suggests cast-iron rather than 
finely spun smooth-wrought steel. Possibly the angular 
lattice work of cross-braces has something to do with 
this stiffness. Wherever the fault may lie the bridge 
can hardly be considered a great artistic effort. It is 
just a useful bridge, — no more. 

And what can one say in good report of the Queensboro 
Bridge? It is a ponderous affair of vertical eye-bars 
and girders that look hke enormous fence pahngs linked 
together, and the marvel is how it manages to maintain 
itself in air. One wonders if it is not likely at any time 
to shut up like a jumping-jack, or fall down like a house 



THE BRIDGES 303 

built of matches. The feehng of a self-sustaining struc- 
ture, such as the other bridges possess, is absent; and one 
grows perhaps unduly critical over the choice of such a pat- 
tern with the successful models of the others so close at 
hand. When it is properly painted, it may appear to 
better advantage; and yet it is difficult to see how the 
disagreeable cross-Unes of its superstructure can ever be 
smoothed away or painted out. 

The aesthetic quality of these huge bridges, it would 
seem, must derive almost wholly from their form. How 
could ornamental sculpture be used upon them, for in- 
stance? The approaches to the Pont Alexandre have 
carved pedestals and groups of figures that are command- 
ing and appropriate, because the bridge is not of a size 
to dwarf them; but such or similar work would appear 
lost at the approaches to any of the East Eiver bridges. 
One has merely to stand at the entrance to the Queensboro 
Bridge and look up at it to realize that sculptural orna- 
mentation in connection with it would be only so much 
labor in vain. It would not be seen for the bigness of 
the bridge itself. If made of a size to scale with the 
bridge it would probably be grandiose, like the Statue 
of Liberty on Bedloe's Island, or monstrous, like the huge 
marbles of the Italian Decadence. Besides, you cannot 
make an ugly mantel-piece look handsome by placing 
statuettes and bronzes upon it. The mantel (and the 
bridge) requires correct proportions. 



304 THE NEW NEW YORK 

And what could one do with decorative patterns upon 
such bridges? Make the pattern of a size corresponding 
to the structure itself, and like the sculpture, it becomes 
bizarre ; make it small, and, again, it is ineffective. A 
fine moulding, a sculptured band, a classic design in steel 
or stone, what could you see of it at the distance of a mile ? 
And a mile or more away is the proper distance to look 
at one of these bridges. From underneath you can grasp 
nothing but the immense mass of the structure; on the 
bridge itself you can see little but lifting towers, droop- 
ing cables, climbing girders. You must get far enough 
away — on another bridge or on a sky-scraper — to see 
the whole bridge at a glance, to get the ensemble. With 
such necessary distance in between you and the object 
of vision, what becomes of sculptured groups or decora- 
tive patterns? They fade out, blur out, and are wholly 
wanting in carrying power. 

One comes back to insist that good form is absolutely 
needful in these colossal bridges if beauty is to be a part 
of them. It is a matter, too, of outline beauty, of the 
traced form against the sky. It is in just this respect 
that the two lower bridges on the river are so satisfactory, 
and the two upper ones are so faulty. It is the sweep 
of the long bending lines from tower to tower, so grateful 
to the eye, that pleases us in the one; it is the sharp in- 
terruption of angle lines, so irritating to the eye, that 
displeases us in the other. And yet it is possible that 




w 



THE BRIDGES 305 

the good form of the first two might be enhanced, and 
the harsh form of the second two disguised, or at least 
minimized, by still another feature. I mean color. 

From time out of mind, humanity seems to have as- 
sociated a bridge with a road, and put down the one as 
being as dirty and as dusty as the other. Perhaps that 
is why bridges (especially if of iron or steel) have always 
been painted a black, or gray, or drab, or dust color. But 
why should this tradition continue with structures that 
are high in air, above the dust and dirt, over wide wind- 
swept rivers? The painting of a battleship a mouldy 
slate color in preparation for war, we can understand is 
a necessary disguise; but what a delightful change when 
the war is over and the ship returns to her peace garment 
of white with buff funnels ! One wonders if a similar 
change could not be wrought in the huge East River 
bridges by painting them in less dismal colors. Varie- 
gated hues would probably not prove satisfactory, and 
not even patriotism could countenance an ''arrangement" 
in red, white, and blue ; but a single color, like buff or 
rose or mauve, might add to the picturesque, and possibly 
the architectural, appearance of the structures. 

In one respect, at least, the bridges are quite right as 
they stand. They are in proper scale with the new city. 
Their approaches now reach down into streets where 
stand buildings of four and five stories, looking singu- 
larly mean and small by comparison; but the small 



306 THE NEW NEW YORK 

buildings are coming down one by one, and will eventu- 
ally be replaced by newer and higher ones which the 
size of the bridges anticipates. The Brooklyn Bridge 
in the lower city, brought into close contact with the 
down-town sky-scrapers, demonstrates the rightness of 
its proportions. The Singer, the Terminal, the Metropoli- 
tan Life, the Flatiron, the Times buildings, all belong in 
scale with the East River structures. The new bridge 
planned to span the Hudson is to be of the same colossal 
character. 

To feel the justness and the appropriateness of these 
huge river-spans one should go up to the Harlem, at the 
north of the city, and look at the dozen or more of small 
bridges for streets and railways that are placed there. 
They seem to belong to another city, an earlier age, and 
are grade-crossings, so to speak — little bridges twenty 
or forty feet above the water, with neither form, weight, 
nor color to distinguish them or dignify them. They 
are only waiting to be pulled down, to be superseded 
by loftier and wider structures. The pattern of the 
Harlem bridge of the future was already in place on the 
river in 1889, in the Washington Bridge with its fine 
arches spanning 510 feet each, its 135 feet of height, and 
its 2400 feet of length. It fits the Harlem River as the 
Manhattan Bridge the East River, and is a beautiful struc- 
ture in every way. 

Even High Bridge rather anticipated the sky-scraper. 



THE BRIDGES 307 

It carries the Croton aqueduct across the Harlem at One 
Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Street, is 116 feet above the 
river, and has thirteen arches resting on sohd granite 
piers. In connection with the smooth water, the winding 
driveway near by, and the river banks covered with 
fohage, this bridge with its repeated arches makes a very 
effective picture. It seems to remind one of something 
out of Turner's sketches, or of bridges we have seen on 
the Rhine or the Seine. The whole view of bridge and 
river and shore is a sharp contrast to the East River 
spans, with the agitated tide-water under them, and the 
tugs and ferries forever in motion, — another one of those 
contrasts so frequently met with in New York. No mod- 
ern city quite equals it in glaring inconsistencies; but 
let us say also that no city quite reaches up to it in 
varied phases of beauty. 



THE WATER-WAYS 



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CHAPTER XVIII 

THE WATER-WAYS 

It is matter of common geographic knowledge that 
the borough of Manhattan is surrounded by water ; that 
the water is furnished by the Hudson, the Harlem, and 
the East rivers; and that these same rivers also make 
channels through the Upper and Lower bays to the sea. 
Three rivers would seem to be a sufficiently large endow- 
ment for one city — at least the claim is large enough, 
especially as two of them are not rivers at all — but, for 
once, it appears we have not claimed enough. A former 
mayor of the city ^ assures us that there are thirteen 
rivers emptying into New York Bay, not including the 
Croton that comes to us through the water mains; and, 
of course, they all belong to the city, or at any rate help 
on its commercial importance in one way or another. 

The figure, however, is somewhat unfortunate because 
it requires such a stretch of the imagination to realize it. 
Presumably the Hackensack, the Passaic, and the Raritan 
are included in the thirteen; but New Jersey would 
certainly object to New York claiming them, even though 

* Hon. Seth Low at Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, 1904. 
311 



312 THE NEW NEW YORK 

their waters do flow seaward past Sandy Hook — a New 
Jersey sand spit, by the way. Presumably, again, the 
Bronx and the East Chester, with Newtown and Flushing 
creeks, and some of the creeks flowing into Jamaica Bay, 
are on the list. They are, however, rivers only by cour- 
tesy. The citizens who live near them, and the watermen 
who navigate them, no doubt enjoy the larger designa- 
tion ; but the titles are not to be taken seriously — except 
when a proud New Yorker goes forth to make a speech 
to the people of an inland city. Commercially, the creeks 
do not ''launch a thousand ships," nor anywhere near 
that number. They are still in the creek stage of com- 
merce as of water. New York really has only one river, 
but that one is ''the lordly Hudson," — a sufficient water- 
way for any city, however large. 

The East River is merely a tide-arm connecting New 
York Bay with Long Island Sound, but it flows between 
Manhattan and Brooklyn and is a very important water- 
way. Perhaps it is the most-traveled stretch of water 
for its length and breadth that the city possesses. It is 
usually supposed to begin where the Harlem River comes 
out; but, legally, it has been decided that it starts near 
Throggs Neck, some ten miles farther up, where the tide- 
waters of Bay and Sound meet. It practically ends at 
the Battery twenty miles below. There, at ebb tide, 
it goes bumping into Governor's Island, and is shunted 
around the western end of the island into the waters of 



THE WATER-WAYS 313 

the Upper Bay. A small part of it passes through But- 
termilk Channel — a narrow reach of water between the 
island and lower Brooklyn, through which came small 
boats loaded with Long Island buttermilk in the ancient 
days, and across which the cattle used to wade at low tide. 

From start to finish the East River is a rapid stream. 
Even down near Wall Street or South Ferry, it goes by 
with a twisting, swirling current that makes the tugs 
wheeze and snort in pushing a ship or schooner into dock. 
The ferry-boats to Brooklyn that still ply backward and 
forward (more from force of habit than as a paying indus- 
try since the tunnels have been opened) have their wor- 
ries with this same current, heading up well against it, 
coming into the slip diagonally, and often with a heavy 
jar against the pilings. When wind and tide are dead 
ahead there is a great deal of effort on the part of craft 
for little progress. The surface is hardly ever smooth 
except at flood tide. Little eddies and tide-rips, with 
geyser-like currents that occasionally seem to boil up 
from below, are frequent. Besides, there is the night- 
and-day churn of tugs and wash of steamers, with rolling 
swells that swash against the pier heads, rush through 
the pilings, and keep the httle craft within the sUps, 
pitching, rolling, dancing. 

Under the Brooklyn Bridge as one looks down on the 
surface there is the same uneasy flashing water. And 
it is darker in hue than that which flows in the Hudson. 



314 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Presumably, this is due to the greater admixture of salt 
water coming, more or less directly, from the sea or the 
Sound. Salt water is always deeper in tone than that 
which is fresh or merely brackish. And yet the East River 
is not a sea-blue or a sea-green, except in the wake of a 
steamer. From the bridges looking straight down one 
gets its local hue in a dark slate or olive color, with some- 
times a blue-steel hue, something more like the water of 
the Black Sea than that of the near-by Sound. The 
Hudson, too, has a deep tone to it under certain lights; 
but with full sunlight there is in it a pronounced jade- 
color — an indefinable gray-green peculiar to harbor 
waters that are half fresh and half salt. 

Above the Manhattan Bridge at Wallabout Bay ^ there 
is a sharp turn of the river as though the stream had tried 
for a passage-way through at that point, and had finally 
given up in disgust, pitching off to the southwest on 
another tack. At Blackwell's Island it is split in two 
and the divided waters pass on either side, the main-trav- 
eled channel being along the Manhattan shore. Farther 
up at Hell Gate comes a clash and a turmoil, for here the 
river makes a quick bend with Ward's Island, Astoria, 
and Manhattan all pushing it different ways. It was 
considered a dangerous place for navigators previous to 

' The name is Dutch and refers to the bend in the river. The Walloons 
are said to have settled there in 1G24. Afterwards the Bay held the 
British prison-ships, as to-day the lower end of it the ships of the Brookljni 
Navy Yard. 



THE WATER-WAYS 315 

the blasting operations of 1876. Certain projecting 
rocks in the channel made eddies and counter-currents 
that often proved disastrous to small craft. There were 
further blastings at Flood Rock in 1885; but though the 
channel is now comparatively free of ledges there is still 
an angry twist and boil of the elements thereabouts. It is 
the meeting-place of several waters, and a struggle for 
right of way is the natural consequence. 

Here, where the Harlem joins and Little Hell Gate, 
above Ward's Island, cuts through, would seem to be the 
beginning (or the ending) of the East River. Just above 
there is a widening of the channel preparatory to the 
river's disappearance in the Sound itself, and many islands 
— Randall's, Riker's, and North and South Brother — ap- 
pear. It is quite apparent that this is really a bay of 
the Sound and not a part of the narrow strait. Beyond 
Throggs Neck and Willetts Point, however, there is no 
possible room for further doubt. The Hmits of New 
York City are left behind and the Sound is ahead — the 
Sound where the great passenger boats go whistling 
hoarsely through the fog up to Fall River, where the 
yachts go cruising, and the coasting schooners come 
laden, and the brave winds blow, blow high, blow low, 
from Pelham Bay to Newfoundland Banks. 

The Harlem, which comes out at Hell Gate, is a very 
tame affair after the deep swift water of the East River. 
It is a small mouth of the Hudson and is not unlike some 



316 THE NEW NEW YORK 

placid little country stream — shallow in places, slow of 
motion, low of shore, and somewhat dirty of hue. It 
does not boil or seethe. Usually its surface is flat and 
reflects very beautifully the evening skies over Fort 
George. No large sailing craft infest it, no ocean liners 
churn up its mud, no long docks push out from its shores. 
In their place one finds a superabundance of small piers 
and docks, with oyster boats, fishing smacks, catboats, 
and many boat-houses that are headquarters for rowing 
clubs. It is a famous stream for small craft to anchor 
in or dry-dock, and also a stream where the artist in 
search of the small picturesque finds ready material. 

There is substantial traffic on the Harlem, too (in the 
aggregate it is considerable) ; but it is not precisely 
representative of New York commerce. It is the old 
New York we see there, not the new; and the general 
impression one gains is that the locality has not kept pace 
with other portions of the island. New York, like every 
other advancing city, pushes its small buildings, factories, 
and bridges ahead of it. Just at present they seem to 
be enjoying a momentary rest on the banks of the Harlem. 
Eventually they will be pushed over the stream or de- 
molished to make room for larger things. As for the 
stream itself, it is only a bogus little river, though it may 
some day, by dredging, become a great thoroughfare. 

But the river of which New York is the proudest is 
the Hudson. What a stream it must have been when 



THE WATER-WAYS 317 

the Half Moon first dropped anchor in its waters ! Its 
discoverer found it so broad — this Groot Riviere — 
that he could not but beUeve it the long-sought passage- 
way to the Indies. He followed it to Troy before he was 
convinced that it was only a river of the New World. In 
those days the primeval forests grew down to the water's 
edge even on the island of Manhattan ; the Catskills and 
the Adirondacks were true enough wildernesses, and the 
Indian routes to the north were chiefly by the water-ways. 
Perhaps the rainfall in the summer and the snowfall in 
the winter were greater: perhaps they were held longer 
under the mosses and the shadows of the vast forests, and 
the stage of water in the tributary streams was more 
evenly maintained. In consequence the river was, no 
doubt, wider and deeper then than now, and its waters 
moved more calmly, without sound or breaking rapids, 
in a mighty flood, from the mountains to the sea. What 
a majestic river it must have been ! 

And how crystal clear the waters ! In that early 
time there were no lands broken by the plough to muddy 
the small streams, there were no huge water-sheds of 
charred timber-stumpage and denuded ground to darken 
the brooks and discolor the lakes, there were no towns 
or cities to drain into the river or pollute it with factories 
or litter it with street refuse. Not even commerce stirred 
its silts or washed its shores. Its waters were "unvexed 
by any keel," its banks were unslashed by railways, its 



318 THE NEW NEW YORK 

mountain walls were unblasted by quarrymen. Nature, 
not commerce, reigned ; and the river belonged as wholly 
and completely to the former then as to the latter now. 
What a marvel of purity it must have been ! "What a 
splendid sweep of translucent waters ! 

It is still a majestic river. At ebb tide, deep and strong 
and nearly as wide again as the East River, it comes 
down by the Palisades, down by the Riverside Drive, 
down by the city wharfs and docks, an unconquered, 
uncontrolled force. What sublimity in its volume ! 
What dignity in its measured movement ! Without 
twist or turn into indentation or bayou it moves serenely 
on. In the Upper Bay much of it spreads out and is 
disintegrated by the tides. It loses its riverine char- 
acter ; it becomes a part of the Bay and eventually floods 
out through the Narrows, through the ]\Iain, the Swash, 
and the Ambrose channels, out to the distant ocean. 

What philosopher or theologian was it that discovered 
a special providence in every great city being furnished 
with a great river at its doorstep for a water supply ? If 
we allow this amusing exchange of place in the proverbial 
cart-and-horse, we may conclude that New York was, 
indeed, fortunate in its Hudson. And, since civilization 
and commerce were destined to follow the discovery of 
the New World, possibly the Hudson was fortunate in 
its New York. The less philosophical and the more 
sceptical may, however^ see in the conjunction something 




Pl. G9. — The Lower Hudson from Singer Tower 



THE WATER-WAYS 319 

that inevitably "happened." Such a river and harbor 
were destined to have just such a city. Both river and 
city are ahke in scale ; and, in some respects, not unlike 
in nature. The breadth and the length of the one are the 
height and the reach of the other. The very swirl of 
the stream, and the worry of the waters about docks and 
piers and bridges, seem to repeat the fret of the street 
and the uneasy movement of its long hnes of people. 
And again, the ceaseless come and go of current and tide, 
with all the power and the push of them, are once more 
suggested in the energy of the city that never rests save 
for the momentary lull betwixt ebb and flow. They 
complement each other — the river and the town. 

The city is more fortunate in its water-ways than per- 
haps many of us imagine. Of course, its commercial 
up-building has derived from its harbor, but how many of 
us realize that much of its beauty and grandeur come 
from the surrounding waters? I mean now not only that 
picturesque beauty that derives from sea hazes and 
mists, from water-reflections upon wall and tower, with 
that wonderful blend of color known only to island cities ; 
but the imposing appearance of the city as a whole, as you 
approach it from the water. If the city were flung down 
upon a flat piece of ground and the only approach to it 
were by railway, how much of an impression would it 
make? And who would marvel over the line or light or 
color of the down-town mountain ridge? If our foreign 



320 THE NEW NEW YORK 

acquaintance came to the city by way of Harlem and the 
Bronx, rather than by Sandy Hook, would they be 
shocked or grieved or astonished or delighted at the first 
appearance of the city? The water approach to New 
York is more than a commercial asset: it is a superb 
avenue leading up to the temple. 

It is not possible to reach Manhattan without crossing 
water — either above it or below it. This is, no doubt, 
something of a bother and a nuisance to the commuter or 
the business man. He is always in a hurry to "get down 
to the office," and ferries and bridges take up too much of 
his time. He much prefers the tunnels under the rivers. 
The electric cars go through the tubes with a rush, and, 
though he sees nothing but the glitter of passing lights, 
he gazes steadily ahead of him and thinks about business, 
knowing very well that he will "get there" in a few min- 
utes. Such an approach is certainly practical and con- 
venient, but just as certainly not pleasurable. Yet no 
one need lament the coming of the tunnels. They will 
supersede the ferries; but the bridges will remain. The 
approach from the west may not in the future be made 
by boats, but the great bridge, now planned for the Hud- 
son, will be followed by others, and the view from them 
two hundred feet in air will be even more imposing. 

It is so now. What more astonishing approach could 
one ask than that from the Brooklyn Bridge? The 
outlook to any and every point of the compass is wide 



THE WATER-WAYS 321 

and wonderful. Up the river it reaches to the Sound 
with bridges and boats and towers and tall chimneys all 
swimming in a purple-blue haze. Down the river you 
overlook the Battery and Governor's Island, to the Upper 
Bay, to the water-ways leading out by the Narrows, and 
in the distance lost in mist, Staten Island. Around to 
the northwest your eyes follow the Hudson with the 
Palisades beyond ; and against them, in partial silhouette, 
are seen the towers and tall buildings of upper New York. 

It is usually at the city, however, that the man on 
the bridge looks. He watches the line of sky-scrapers 
grow from day to day; he sees the plying steamers be- 
neath him, the new work on the docks, the moving lines 
of trucks along the wharves, the peopled decks of the 
ferry-boats. The human interest is his. The hum of 
the hive over there where the high buildings cluster the 
closest comes to him with a strange lure. He is drawn 
toward it irresistibly. The zeal of his business hath 
eaten him up. 

Yet he is not indifferent to the broader outlook. Ask 
him questions and you will find that he has seen the stu- 
pendous beauty of the lower water-ways set with green 
islands under sunset skies. He has seen many times the 
long sweep of the rivers by the rounded shores, and the 
far gUtter of the Upper Bay flecked with steamers, sails, 
and hurrying tugs. He knows the graceful lines of the 
new suspension bridge, the charm of the morning light 



322 THE NEW NEW YORK 

striking upon the white walls of the Metropolitan tower, 
the wonderful shadows cast by the high buildings of the 
lower city in the evening light. He may even see some 
color charm in the advertisements that roof the tenements 
of the East Side. Perhaps he is more impressed by the 
"bigness" of city, land, and sea, than by small patches 
of beauty in the scene ; but then who is not ? Who can 
fail of being awed by such vast proportions? The man 
on the bridge is not so sadly out of focus. He appreci- 
ates what he sees and, poor mean money-grubber that 
we may contemptuously think him, he may even nurse 
dreams of the running water and the splendid ship that 
will some day bear him out to Europe or Far Cathay, away 
from business and "the Street," away from the hum of 
the hive, away from the worry of the money-world. 

Just so with the commuter from New Jersey who is 
rushed through the tube in the morning but, perhaps, 
returns home by the ferry at night. He can spare 
more time in the evening and possibly goes down the 
river from Twenty-Third Street or up the river to the 
Erie or West Shore railroad station. The ride is restful, 
and he likes to sit out on the deck and see the distant city 
in the sunset light with the window-panes of the sky- 
scrapers flashing fire, and the high walls suffused with 
pink and rose and lilac. He has seen it many times be- 
fore, but it is always interesting. It is his city, and he is 
proud of it at heart, though he sometimes speaks slight- 



THE WATER-WAYS 323 

ingly of it. And he never wearies of the great river. 
Whether he crosses it by ferry, or gUdes down it by 
day-boat, or pushes up it by ocean-steamer, it is always 
the majestic river serenely sweeping downward to the 
sea — the river that flows by the first city of the New 
World, his city, the great New York. 

Quite as impressive as this sunset scene is the Hudson 
by night when the brilliant ferry-boats ply forward and 
backward from shore to shore, when a vast circle of lights 
along the water Hne seems to surround one, reaching from 
Fort Lee to Gowanus Bay — a Milky Way more piercing 
than the stars and set with blazing constellations of elec- 
tricity at many pier heads. All sorts of lights are burning 
there, and all sorts of colors are showing — red, yellow, 
green, blue, lilac. They burn on boats and barges, on 
docks and buoys, on mast heads and Liberty statues, all 
in a far panorama flung around one in a ring. The 
thousands of lights high above the water, glittering in 
rows against the eastern sky, are more obvious but still 
somewhat illusive. Each year the mass of lighted win- 
dows grows, until now at night the illusion of a city set 
upon a hill has become quite marked. The ridge of the 
hill appears, of course, along Broadway, where the highest 
sky-scrapers are set ; and right in the center of it rises the 
illuminated tower of the Singer Building, blazing with 
edgings of light, fretted with golden fire, — a gigantic 
arabesque of electricity set against the heavens. 



324 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Down past the lighted city, by flaring docks and 
flashing ferries that are reflected from its broken surface, 
flows the great river. By night as by day, by sunlight or 
moonlight or starlight, it is always beautiful. Storm 
makes it less agreeable, as fog and ice more dangerous, 
but its beauty is not obliterated. Snow from the north and 
the lights of the city seen through it dimly and distantly, 
wind that seems to drive the water fiercely down the bay 
and turn the ferry-boats from their courses, waves blown 
into whitecaps by the gale and driven with a slash against 
the pier heads, are often more beautiful than the weave 
and ravel of moonlight on the water, or the stars mirrored 
and reflected from the blue-black floor. 

In all moods and in all seasons the river is the majestic 
river. It is the wide tideway of the city bearing the fleets 
of passenger steamers, the long black hulls of commerce, 
the sails of pleasure, the despised lines of scows and 
lighters, even the dredgers of commercial necessity. As a 
water approach to a city it has few rivals. It might even 
be doubted if it has an equal. 




Pl. 72. — Thk II Mil, km 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 



Pu XIX. — NEAR THE SHIPPING DISTRICT 



TOI51T2ia 0H1SSIH2 3HT HABM — .XIX jS 




¥^A ^^ 



CHAPTER XIX 

DOCKS AND SHIPS 

Lest the unimaginative stranger gain the idea that the 
island of Manhattan is only a few acres of land in a large 
bay — the ordinary island that one sees in almost every 
harbor — perhaps it is worth while saying that one must 
travel some thirty miles to circumnavigate it; and lest, 
again, it be thought that the Greater New York is not a 
sea city, it may be said that there are five boroughs in it 
and only one of them (the Bronx) on the mainland. It is 
a city of islands, if we allow our fancy some play ; but a 
city sea-worn rather than sea-born. Venice with its 
hundred islands was filled in, made by deposits of river 
silt ; whereas New York was cut out, hewn by the waters 
from the native rock, separated from the mainland by its 
tideways. They are both cities of the sea, but not at all 
alike either physically or commercially. 

In fact, any comparison between Venice and New 
York must emphasize the differences rather than the like- 
nesses. For her hundred islands we have but three, 
but any one of ours outbulks all of hers put together. 
Again, the commerce of Venice was once considered very 

327 



328 THE NEW NEW YORK 

large, and, when the city was ''towering in her pride of 
place," there were thirty-five hundred sails in the service 
of the repubUc — a goodly showing for the Mediseval Age ; 
but though New York has no great merchant marine of its 
own, there are twenty thousand craft a year that come into 
the port, and perhaps any thirty-five of its ''tramp" 
steamers could carry all the goods and chattels of the 
Venetian thirty-five hundred. The seven-mile circum- 
ference of the Venetian islands, the hundred or more canals 
with their many wharves, seem again large in capacity; 
but New York has already over four hundred miles of docks 
and not one-half of its available shores are occupied. 
Venice, past or present, must be multiplied many times 
to reach up to New York; and even Liverpool with 
its one hundred and London with its two hundred 
miles of docks are out of the reckoning. 

There is a fly in the ointment, however, about these 
docks. They are not of stone like those of London or 
Liverpool; they have not the massiveness of the quais 
of Havre nor even the solidity of the fondamenti of Venice. 
The majority of them are affairs of wood, propped up on 
piles driven in the mud, and have nothing to commend 
them except their cheapness and their convenience. 
Their lengths and heights vary considerably ; some have 
sheds upon them and some have nothing at all; and 
their state of neglect or repair varies also. 

The new docks of the Chelsea Improvement have two- 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 329 

story sheds of structural steel, are eight hundred feet or 
more in length, and are, all told, great improvements on 
the old ones. The docks keep growing in size, and extend- 
ing around the islands more and more each year; but 
even so, the demand seems greater than the supply. 
To meet this demand there is just now a prepared plan for 
eight docks along the Brooklyn water front from Twenty- 
Eighth Street to Thirty-Sixth Street, that shall be from 
twelve to eighteen hundred feet in length. Besides this 
there is a great project afoot for the utilization of Jamaica 
Bay by building docks on the bay islands, and dredging a 
channel in from the sea that shall accommodate the largest 
steamers. The cost of it is figured to be somewhere in the 
fifty millions, and the capacity is said to be something 
quite inexpressible in figures. 

But neither the new nor the old docks are very beautiful. 
They are quaint enough when old and water-worn, and in 
connection with ships and colors they make a good back- 
ground for pictures; but New York is not very proud of 
them (except possibly the Chelsea ones) and would rather 
they did not occupy so conspicuous a place at the city's 
entrance. Perhaps there is a similar feeling about the life 
along these docks. And yet the people by the water's 
edge are always unique in color and movement if not in 
intrinsic worth. They furnish variety in uniformity — 
the variety of many nations, for all the world gathers 
on the New York docks. 



330 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The early gathering place was no doubt the lower end of 
the East River. The Battery (which, by the way, never 
battered anything, at any time) was the first landing- 
place of the Dutch, and it was the region about South 
Ferry that afterward became an anchorage for their flat- 
bottomed, high-pooped ships. After the Revolution the 
large sailing craft that came into the harbor required 
deeper water to make landings; so the shallows were 
filled in from Front Street, the docks were pushed out into 
the stream, and South Street came into existence. In 
very recent years the docks have been extended still 
farther, and the shipping offices and storage houses along 
South Street are now some distance back from the pier 
heads. Some of the old buildings with new fronts are 
still standing ; and, even to-day, there are huge schooners 
and square-rigged ships lying at the piers with bowsprits 
reaching over into the street. Some reminders of the days 
of clipper ships and the China trade linger, but are gradu- 
ally being elbowed out of existence by newer enterprises. 

The East River front of Manhattan is now a strange 
conglomeration of docks, trucks, shops, saloons, and 
warehouses. Many commercial interests are centered 
there, with many people and much activity. Everything 
is moving or being moved. At Coenties Slip, as one 
comes around from South Ferry, the activity is not at once 
apparent. There is a little park with bushes and trees 
(Jeannette Park) near by, which is usually well patronized 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 331 

by the unemployed; and across the street from it there 
are scores of canal-boats tied together in the dock, that 
seem deserted and decadent. But a few steps farther on 
brings a change. Long piers run out into the river and 
brown-red sheds are alive with milhng men and puUing 
horses. Steamers from Spain, Porto Rico, Havana, 
Galveston, ships from many southern ports, are unloading 
or taking on cargo. The street is a tangle of trucks, the 
sidewalk a turmoil of people, the shops a bustle of business. 
Many of the old buildings are occupied as shipping offices, 
storehouses, or ship chandleries. Anything needed on 
shipboard can be bought in such places — canvas, cordage, 
blocks, packing, pipes, tubes, oils, paints, lanterns, com- 
passes, bells, swords, guns. Food and clothing supplies 
are near at hand ; and the saloon along South Street, with 
its modicum of cheer, is never ''hull down" on the horizon. 
When Jack or his captain comes ashore, there are plenty of 
opportunities offered him to get rid of his money before he 
reaches the Bowery. 

As one moves toward the Brooklyn Bridge the interests 
become more varied. The different slips widen out to the 
docks and furnish room for many warehouses and shops in 
low brick buildings, some of them with gambreled roofs 
and dormer windows. The docks are piled high with odd- 
looking boxes, with green and blue barrels ; schooners and 
ships are anchored beside car floats loaded with yellow 
freight-cars ; ferry-houses are near by from which bright- 



332 THE NEW NEW YORK 

colored boats are coming and going; tugs are pushing 
and hauling at tows ; steamers rush by with a splash and 
a swash. From the piers, looking up and over the tangle 
of trucks, perhaps the stranger catches a glimpse of the 
Broadway sky-scrapers, resting serenely in the far upper 
air like a ridge of snow mountains, quite unaffected by the 
noisy worry of the water front. How stupendous in size, 
how superb in light and air they seem by comparison with 
the junk shops and the dock sheds ! Perhaps he glances 
around to the east, and there sees the swooping span of 
the Brooklyn Bridge, — still another contrast between the 
new and the old. Possibly later on he figures it out quietly 
by himself that the dirty docks and the greasy ships and the 
noisy trucks are after all not to be despised, for they made 
possible the beautiful bridge and paid for the immaculate- 
looking sky-scrapers. Commerce foots the bill, abuse it 
as we may. 

South Street runs on under the Brooklyn Bridge, past 
Fulton Market with its fish stalls and tumble-down shops ; 
past Peck Slip with its old houses; past Providence and 
New Haven steamers, the Manhattan Bridge, the little 
long park at Rutgers Shp ; past warehouses, warehouses, 
warehouses. Scows are being filled with city refuse, cars 
are being unloaded with merchandise at the docks, fac- 
tories and machine-shops are cropping out along the way, 
gas-houses and lumber-yards begin to bulk large. Right 
in the midst of this region (formerly a haunt of thieves) 




Pl. 73. — Old Ships, South Stkeet 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 333 

comes another surprise. This is Corlear's Park with its 
Italian-looking loggia and its eight acres sloping down to 
the open river. There are no piers or sheds here, and the 
water view is unobstructed. Sound steamers, sloops, 
schooners, lighters, ferry-boats slip past on the tide, up 
and under the Williamsburgh Bridge ; and occasionally a 
motor-boat with its put-put, or some pleasure yacht, 
careens and pitches on its way. Off in the background, 
across the river, are the battle-ships that are being repaired 
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or the old hulks that have 
had their day and are now rotting at the dock. It is a 
picturesque spot just here at Corlear's Hook, where the 
river turns and where South Street comes to an end. 

The North River, as the lower part of the Hudson is 
sometimes called, was not of much trade importance in the 
early days of New York. There were no docks along it be- 
cause all the ships went to South Street. Sailing craft 
came around the Battery and went up the Hudson without 
stopping. They were seen and admired by the New 
Yorkers who had residences on the ridge, for the ridge was 
then famous for the 'Wiew." So late as 1800 old St. Paul's, 
Columbia College, and the Hospital looked down to the 
river and beheld a practically unobstructed panorama. 
There was no West Street then. 

Before that time the water front was even more primi- 
tive. From Warren to Desbrosses Street was the 
"bouwerie" of Anneke Jans, whose many descendants 



334 THE NEW NEW YORK 

still dream of untold wealth coming to them when the law 
finally gives them their due. On either side of Canal Street 
was Lispenard's Meadows, where almost anything could 
be docked except a ship, and where nothing was trucked 
except loads of hay. Beyond came Greenwich Village 
with no vast commercial interests, though ships sometimes 
lay at anchor in the stream off from it. After this the 
shore line as far as Spuyten Duyvil Creek was unbroken 
and untrodden — Fort Gansevoort, which stood near the 
present market-place, and Fort Washington at One 
Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Street, being latter-day works. 

But a great change has taken place since the days of 
the Dutch, or the English, or even the American occupa- 
tion. Less than a hundred years has transformed the 
North River into a water-way for the ships of the world, 
the meadow front is now a broad street with the unceasing 
reverberation of traffic ; and the waters' edge, from the 
Battery to the Riverside Park, is occupied by long piers 
and sheds where ocean liners are docked and unloaded. 
The ocean-carrying trade of New York is now located 
there. Practically all the important lines of passenger 
steamers have their docks there, or across the river at 
Hoboken. 

Along the Chelsea region of the North River, scat- 
tered like the sky-scrapers on Broadway, are the huge 
transatlantic liners with sharp noses pushing in toward 
West Street. With them and near them are the smaller 




Pl. 74. — The Mauuetaxia 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 335 

steamers pl3''ing to Havana, Mexico, South America, Spain, 
Italy, Greece; the immigrant steamers coming up from 
Naples, Palermo, or Trieste ; the coasting steamers from 
New Orleans, Galveston, Boston, Providence; the white 
river steamers running to Troy and Albany. In the 
foreign passenger trade alone there are some three hundred 
or more of these craft coming and going to this port; 
and the number of coasters that creep into the harbor at 
odd times and in strange ways mounts up into the thou- 
sands. 

The ''tramps," fruit carriers, cattle and tank steamers 
are of all kinds and descriptions, come from all over the 
seven seas and beyond, and fly the flags of every nation 
having a merchant marine. Besides these there are ships 
and sails of old-time merchants, perhaps, that have 
no regular sailings, casual ships with strange cargoes that 
come up from the underworld of China or Peru when they 
can, and go out again with grain, iron, or coal for distant 
seas when they must. 

They make graceful combinations on the water, with 
their fine lines and colors, their smoke and steam, their 
gliding motion — these ships and sails. In fact, the 
North River, with its fleet of big and little craft and its 
many-colored flags, funnels, and hulls, makes a harbor 
view more lively and more imposing than Backhuisen or 
Willem van de Velde ever imagined. Not the least im- 
portant values in the picture are the fore-and-aft sails of 



336 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the huge six and seven masted schooners or the square sails 
of barks or brigs or full-rigged ships. Even the Uttle spots 
of steam and color in tugs, fire-boats, car-floats, yachts, 
help out the picture by giving it brilUancy. When the red 
and green and olive ferries, the yellow revenue-cutters, 
the blue canal-boats, the white island-boats, with an 
occasional white and buff war-ship, are added to the 
scene, and the whole moving mass has the towering lower 
city at sunset for a background, the color of it becomes 
startling, bewildering, quite dazzling. 

The piers on the North River where the big steamers 
are warped in and the little ones touch or are unloaded, are 
at least capacious ; and capacity is, after all, an absolute 
necessity. Huge cargoes have to be handled upon them 
in short spaces of time, and many donkey engines, der- 
ricks, and hoists, with scores and scores of longshoremen, 
are in requisition. Hand trucks, horse trucks, auto-trucks, 
rumble here and there with boxes, bales, and barrels con- 
taining goods from everywhere — bananas from Jamaica, 
coffee from Mexico, tea from China, wine from France, 
macaroni from Italy, spices from the Indies, sugar from 
Cuba, woods from Brazil, pulp from Norway, cloths from 
England, cutlery from Germany. This freight handling 
is always more or less compUcated, because the docks are 
the distributing places where goods are sorted over and 
re-shipped to different points throughout the country. 
Moreover, for every cargo coming in there is perhaps a 




:m. 




- \ 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 337 

larger cargo going out. Silks and rugs and works of art 
may be arriving at one side of the pier ; and beef, machin- 
ery, shoes, be departing by the other side. Add to this 
foreign trade, the domestic trade by river, Sound, and 
shore, by railway and tramway ; add further the passenger 
traffic along these piers from ferry and steamer, the come 
and go by car and cab and carriage, and it can easily be 
imagined that the North River piers and docks are places 
of activity, centers of energy. 

Though thousands are at work about these piers and 
are continually crossing each other's path, there is usually 
little confusion. Everything moves systematically and 
everyone understands the law of traffic in the city, — 
keep to the right and keep moving. In and out of these 
pier sheds all day (and sometimes all night), people, trucks, 
and carts move in files, loading and unloading, passing 
and repassing. West Street receives them and rejects 
them and receives them again. The wide thoroughfare 
seems always in an uproar (except on Sunday) ; and, of 
course, traffic occasionally gets into a tangle. 

This is not to be wondered at, for the mass and the mix 
of West Street are something quite out of the ordinary. 
It \^ facile princeps the street of trucks in the whole city. 
Every conceivable kind of a vehicle — dray, express-wagon, 
mail-wagon, furniture-van, butcher-cart, garbage-cart, 
beer-skid, beam-reach — is there. Sandwiched in among 
them or dashing across them are cabs, carriages, hansoms. 



338 THE NEW NEW YORK 

automobiles. Dozens of trolley cars run across this street 
to the different ferry-houses ; two car tracks run the full 
length of it, and down these tracks, perhaps in the busiest 
portion of the day, will come a long train of freight-cars of 
the New York Central Railroad. Such a hurly-burly of 
traffic naturally produces the ''jam" which sometimes re- 
quires the services of the police to straighten out. 

The dock side of West Street is laid with asphalt, but 
the street proper, where the trucks and trolleys go, is 
paved with stone blocks — Belgian blocks. The jar and 
jolt, the shock and rumble, arising from these stones is not 
pleasant. No one can hear himself talk during traffic hours, 
except the cabbies and the truck drivers. Even they are 
usually purple in the face from trying to outroar the rumble, 
though sometimes they get blue and green with wrath when 
a colhsion takes place, and they exchange compliments 
about each other's driving. 

The human voice, however, does not reach very far in 
West Street. A gong, a honk, or a whistle does better 
service. People, when they want to chat quietly, go inside. 
The ''inside" is a saloon, a restaurant, a shop, or an office 
of the kind usually found along the sea edge of a city. 
The North River interior is newer than that of the East 
River but, in character, not essentially different. The 
shipping agencies, supply stores, warehouses, factories, 
mills, markets, lumber-yards, with all kinds of little dens 
that sell drink or food or clothing to the longshoremen, are 



DOCKS AND SHIPS 339 

also apparent. They are not cleanly-looking or inviting. 
The dust of the street and the habits of the crowd keep 
them grimy and bedraggled-looking. But they are pic- 
turesque. Even the blatant sign with its high-keyed color- 
ing belongs here and helps complete the picture. Modern 
commerce in West Street, with its trucks and liners and 
dingy buildings, is just as pictorial, and far more truthful, 
than, say, Claude's shipping and seaports, with classic 
palaces and quais smothered in a sulphur sunset. But it 
may be admitted that a proper angle of vision and some 
perspective are needed to see it that way. 

And around the water front on West Street, as well as 
South Street, one meets with a soiled and unkempt-looking 
mass of humanity that is quite as picturesque in its way as 
the streets or the buildings. It is by no means made up 
of New Yorkers alone. The races of the earth seem to 
have sent representatives to it, each one speaking his own 
language. The waifs and strays that have been jettisoned 
violently from foreign ships, the stowaways from the liners, 
the tramps from the railways, all gather along the docks 
looking for something to turn up. Among them one can 
see blacks from Jamaica, browns from India, yellows from 
the Malay Peninsula, whites from Europe, and half-tones 
from South America. It is a colorful mass of humanity in 
both face and costume, and it has the further artistic 
element of repose about it. That is to say, it sits down in 
the sunshine whenever it can, and works only by fits and 



340 THE NEW NEW YORK 

starts. Its color is oftener seen in conjunction with some 
convenient barrel or saloon bar than elsewhere. No doubt 
there are many hard-working, decent citizens among the 
longshoremen, but as a class they are given a rather bad 
name. Thieves and ''dock rats" mingle with them, thugs 
like their company, derelicts from every sea, ne'er-do- 
wells from every shore, join them. The pohce do not 
hold them in the highest esteem. 

Yet the longshoremen are as much a part of New York 
as the ship-owners, agents, clerks, commuters, and other 
well-dressed people that pass along West Street — an 
interesting part at that. And West Street is a character- 
istic New York thoroughfare furnishing both color and 
contrast with quite as much vividness as Broadway. It is 
neither a soulful nor a sanitary belt, nor is it a place 
where one can rest body or mind; but it has swirls of 
motion, flashes of light, combinations of tones that are at 
least entertaining. The place and the people complement 
each other. 




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BREATHING SPACES 



Pl. XX. — morningside park 



:h^a'i 3ai2omn5ROM — .XX .jh 




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CHAPTER XX 

BREATHING SPACES 

The demand for parks, with their groves, meadows, 
lakes, and rambles, dates back to the hanging gardens of 
Babylon, if not to the Garden of Eden. Mankind has 
always loved the open spaces, especially when shut up in 
cities; and to-day, whenever an odd acre comes into a 
city's possession, its Common Council is straightway in- 
vited to make a park of it and name it after the last states- 
man of the town. 

This demand does not come solely from those who feed 
the squirrels and study the birds. Everybody recognizes 
that parks are something of the country in the city, that 
they mean much pleasure to the town-dwellers, and are 
beautiful fields of color in a wilderness of steel and stone. 
Moreover, they are supposed to add to urban healthful- 
ness. Settlement workers and city-beautiful folk talk 
about them as ''the lungs of the city"; and possibly 
some fancy we should stop breathing without them. 
Naturally enough, they are considered desirable posses- 
sions. 

But the lung metaphor is somewhat deceptive. The 

343 



344 THE NEW NEW YORK 

parks breathe for themselves, not for us. Trees, grass, 
flowers, and the open ground all absorb sunlight and air; 
they do not give them out. Instead of adding to our 
store they are taking away from us what they can. Of 
course, they help us negatively. The parks are attractive, 
we are drawn toward them and into the open; we thus 
get a larger quantity from the general supply of air and 
light than we otherwise would, and are benefited thereby. 
The result is the same and the conclusion reached is 
perhaps correct enough. The parks are breathing spaces 
of unquestionable value to the city's health. 

As regards the supply of fresh air perhaps New York 
is better off than is generally realized. Manhattan, it 
will be remembered, is an island with broad surrounding 
water-ways; and up and down these water-ways move 
winds that are forever changing and renewing the atmos- 
phere of the city. There is never a day when the East 
River has not its breeze. The great wind areas of Long 
Island Sound and the Lower Bay are connected by this 
strait; and the air, like the water, draws through from 
one to the other. Blackwell's Island in warm weather is 
cool when the Central Park is like an oven; and the East 
Siders, on their recreation piers, are comfortably enjoying 
the bands and the breezes while many a Fifth Avenue 
dinner party is gasping for breath behind a row of boxed 
bushes on the terrace of some fashionable restaurant. 

The Hudson is no such wind-way as the East River. 



BREATHING SPACES 345 

The air current through the PaHsades and beyond is 
much sHghter, and on some summer days it is almost non- 
existent. Usually, however, a breeze is stirring there, and 
in winter, with snow, the Hudson can furnish forth a gale 
to suit the taste of the most exacting. At all times it is 
a part of the circuit. Were it not, New York would be a 
much hotter place in summer than it is at present, which 
is something no sane citizen likes to think about. 

Above the rivers and above the city there are still other 
movements of air — the alternation and variation of land 
and sea breezes. Down in the small side streets they are 
not felt perhaps, but the high roof-gardens and the upper 
stories of the sky-scrapers are never without them. The 
flags up there are waving from their staffs, the white steam 
is cut off quickly from its pipe and blown away ; the gray 
smoke streams out pennant-like and is soon lost. It is 
these breezes of the upper space that the sky-scraper 
gathers on its high walls and shunts down into the street, 
sometimes to the pedestrian's disgust, and sometimes to his 
great relief. That the lower city has now cooler and 
better-ventilated streets than before the era of high build- 
ings, there can be no question. To compensate for this 
the high buildings have cut off some light, and yet the 
darkening of the lower streets is not very apparent. Ex- 
change Place is always cited as an example of modern 
street gloom, but it was never other than a narrow alley 
at any time. 



346 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The air and the Hght of New York are excellent in 
both quantity and quality. That people build apartment- 
houses and offices to exclude them is unfortunately true. 
In utilizing every foot of rentable space, rooms have been 
constructed where neither air nor light can enter except in 
a crippled way. Unsanitary conditions are likely to arise 
from such economy, and, possibly, it is a recognition of 
this that drives so many apartment-house and tenement- 
house people to the parks. There, or promenading the 
streets or on a roof-garden, is about the only place where 
comparatively pure air and light are obtainable. 

Quite contrary to the prevailing belief, New York is 
well supplied with parks. It is usually assumed that the 
Central Park is our one and only "lung"; whereas Man- 
hattan, alone, has some thirty or more open spaces, dis- 
tributed throughout the borough, and doing service as 
parks or playgrounds. The dweller on the ridge, whose 
business is at one end of Broadway and his residence not 
far from the other end, knows only half a dozen. Stuy- 
vesant Park with its fine trees. East River Park with its 
view of the water at Eighty-Fifth Street, and Jefferson 
Park opposite Little Hell Gate have probably escaped him. 
On the West Side the charming little Hudson Park with 
its trees and water garden and green grass is quite as un- 
known as the open grounds of the General Theological 
Seminary at Twenty-Second Street, or the Clinton and 
Audubon parks farther north. They are all open spaces, 



BREATHING SPACES 347 

like Union Square and the Battery; and are greatly 
enjoyed by their own communities, though Fifth Avenue 
knows them not. 

The Central Park is, however, the chief oasis, and one 
that New Yorkers are vastly proud of. It is the largest 
of the Manhattan parks, being two and a half miles long by 
half a mile wide and containing eight hundred and forty 
acres. In 1857 it was a denuded region sacred to swamps, 
rocks, refuse, and squatters. From that unhappy condi- 
tion it was rescued by the genius of Frederick Law 
Olmsted and Calvert Vaux and converted into a 
beautiful piece of landscape. At the time of its taking 
over Mr. Olmsted said of it that it ''had less desirable 
characteristics for a park" than any other six hundred 
acres on the island. Nevertheless, such natural features 
as it possessed in hills, ravines, hollows, and waters were 
retained and emphasized. It was not made wholly 
artificial like the Boboli Gardens in Florence, nor allowed 
to run to mere grass and trees like the Prater in Vienna. 
The original endowment was cleverly utilized, and the 
stranger to-day does not know where nature leaves off and 
art begins. It is a beautiful blend of the two, resembling 
nothing so much as the well-kept grounds and gardens of 
some large country seat. 

Yet the Central Park, for all its variety in water, hill, 
and meadow, its grace of roadways, bridle-paths, and foot- 
paths, its charm of color in trees and vines and flowers. 



348 THE NEW NEW YORK 

has several notable defects. By reason of being imbed- 
ded in the city it is an interior park without a water 
front — something that is sadly missed. Again, it lacks 
commanding ground, an eminence from which a view of 
the city or the surrounding country would be obtainable. 
Just now, hemmed in as it is by high apartment-houses and 
hotels, it begins to look cramped in its quarters. Still 
again, it has no large trees, nothing of the primeval forest. 
When the ground was taken over by the city fifty years 
ago, it was practically bare. Half a million trees, shrubs, 
and vines have been set out there since, and the result has 
been most astonishing. The trees now stand thick in 
spots, the undergrowth of shrubs is a delightful tangle, 
and the happy disposition of flowering bush and plant 
along the driveways calls for nothing but praise ; yet one 
misses the big trees of the Bronx and the Pelham Bay 
parks. 

And once more (to go on with the defects of its character), 
the Central Park has not flat spaces enough to lend that 
quality of repose so essential in landscape. It is a series of 
turns, twists, elevations, and depressions, full of strange 
and beautiful surprises, stimulating, even exciting; but 
not restful or peaceful. Its scant Meadow, with its 
"babble of green fields," does little more than suggest the 
rural. It is a meadow of a lovely if limited beauty, a 
city meadow nurtured by art. The whole park is like it — 
a beautiful exotic, a rare orchid, ornate in form and dis- 




Pl. 77. — Lake in the Central Park 



BREATHING SPACES 349 

tinguished in color; but not a field daisy, not a flower 
of the forest. 

But those who drive in the Central Park every afternoon 
never think of its defects nor question its superiority. To 
them it is one of the loveliest spots in all the world. And 
in the early spring, when the jonquils and Forsythia are in 
bloom, when the young grass is just starting, and the stems 
and buds are reddening along the way, you are quite ready 
to agree with them. Nothing could be more charming 
than the park at this time, unless it is the same park later 
in the season when the azaleas and rhododendrons are out, 
or bushes like the syringa are in blossom. All through the 
summer there is change and variety in the bloom, and 
when the winter arrives, the Belvedere, the Mall, the 
Ramble are still beautiful in their lines even under a 
mantle of snow. 

Very different from this enclosure is the open strip of 
land along the Hudson called Riverside Park. It is a high, 
commanding bench of ground looking out over the river to 
Weehawken and the Palisades, and is without doubt the 
finest driveway in Manhattan. Even Mr. Henry James 
has something good to say of its natural location, if not 
of our utilization of it : — 

''She (New York) has come at last far upon the 
west side, into the possession of her birthright, into 
the roused consciousness that some possibility of a river 
front may still remain to her; though, obviously, a 



350 THE NEW NEW YORK 

justified pride in this property has yet to await the 
birth of a more responsible sense of style in her dealings 
with it, the dawn of some adequate plan or controlling 
idea. Splendid the elements of position, on the part of 
the new 'Riverside Drive' (over the small, suburbanizing 
name of which, as at the effect of a second-rate, shop-worn 
article, we sigh as we pass) ; yet not less irresistible the 
pang of our seeing it settle itself on meagre bourgeois 
happy-go-lucky lines. The pity of this is sharp in propor- 
tion as the 'chance' has been magnificent, and the sore- 
ness of perception of what merely might have been is 
as constant as the flippancy of the little vulgar 'private 
houses' or the big vulgar apartment hotels, that are hav- 
ing their own way so unchallenged, with the whole question 
of composition and picture. The fatal 'tall' pecuniary 
enterprise rises where it will, in the candid glee of new 
worlds to conquer; the intervals between take whatever 
little foolish form they like ; the sky line, eternal victim of 
the artless jumble, submits again to the type of the broken 
hair comb turned up ; the streets that abut from the east 
condescend at their corners to any congruity or poverty 
that may suit their convenience. And all this in presence 
of an occasion for noble congruity such as one scarce 
knows where to seek in the case of another great city." ^ 

But commercial New York, with all its greed, has not 
ruined the Riverside Park. On the contrary, a good many 
people have thought it much improved by its terraces 
and stone copings, its paths down to the water, and its 
little towers and pavilions. Seen from the upper river 
it is rather an imposing-looking park in its monuments and 
* North American Review, December, 1905. 



BREATHING SPACES 351 

marbles, its trees and grass and flowers. As for its skirting 
residences, they might be worse. In fact, we have seen 
worse along the banks of the Thames and the Seine — 
residences that never have received a word of criticism 
on the score of either ugliness or commercialism. Farther 
up the island there is a pendant to it (now fast changing 
into a continuation of it), an inside park — the Speedway 
along the Harlem. It is not so provocative of the adjec- 
tive as the Riverside Drive, but is not the less a beautiful 
stretch along the water with high woods and gracefully 
turned hills on its western side. 

But any one of the Greater New York boroughs is 
better off than Manhattan in its parks. The borough of 
the Bronx, for instance, has in the Bronx Park not only 
six hundred odd acres of land, but a river with a gorge, 
many hills and meadows, and real forests. Van Cortlandt 
Park is still larger, with over eleven hundred acres; and 
it also has forests, glen, meadow, stream, and lake, where 
people can go without being warned off the grass, where 
golf and tennis and ball can be played without let or 
hindrance, and where beautiful gardens can be studied 
quietly and loved at leisure. 

The largest park, however, is that of Pelham Bay, 
with its seventeen hundred acres. Perhaps this has 
the greatest possibilities of all, for by the disposition 
and the quantity of its land it is capable of bringing the 
real shore-and-country scene into the city proper. At 



352 THE NEW NEW YORK 

present it is somewhat apart from the life of the me- 
tropolis. It lies beside Long Island Sound and is six miles 
from the Harlem River. The growth of Manhattan has 
not extended up the shore of the Sound. The facilities 
of transit are not good, and perhaps the time-honored 
tradition of '^ malaria" continues. At any rate, Pel- 
ham Bay is quite primitive ; and the magnificent park, 
though under the park commission, has not been ''laid 
out" like a Sans-Souci. Its nine miles of shore line, its 
islands and little caves and bathing beaches, are still intact 
and practically untouched; its broad, flat meadows and 
its great trees have not been wasted or denuded or cut 
up in any way. It is a superb natural park, open to the 
Sound view and swept by the Sound breezes. In a short 
time, when traveling there is made easier, the people of the 
city will discover that this is their real playground — the 
most rural and restful of all their parks. 

Prospect Park in Brooklyn is another city-hemmed 
space like the Central Park in Manhattan. It is not so 
large by several hundred acres, but it is in many respects a 
finer and more beautiful spot of green. It has high ground 
with a commanding view of the greater city, the harbors, 
the islands, the channels, the sea. Indeed, it was this high 
ground that was chosen for the battle of Long Island in 
1776, and near it a tablet and a monument record the 
place and the event. The people of Brooklyn were wise 
in reserving this five-hundred-acre tract as a memorial, 



BREATHING SPACES 353 

as well as for a present need. Fortunately, many of its 
old trees were still standing when the park was taken over 
in 1866, and to-day they are one of the attractive features 
of the place. Besides these there are meadows, parade 
grounds, terraces with great masses of flowers, drives, 
bridle-paths, lakes, rambles, fountains — all that art can 
do to supplement nature. In addition there is its imposing 
Flatbush Avenue entrance. A plaza has been formed 
with shrubbery borders, and in the center of it a massive 
masonry arch in honor of the soldiers and sailors of the 
Civil War has been erected. On top of it is MacMonnies' 
spirited bronze quadriga. From this main entrance one 
can drive straight down the avenue and over the new 
Manhattan Bridge into Manhattan ; while from the south- 
eastern entrance he can drive in the opposite direction by 
the Ocean Parkway straight to Manhattan Beach and the 
sea. 

But Prospect Park is not the only breathing place, nor 
the best one, in the borough of Brooklyn. The East River 
shore and the Brooklyn Heights are excellent in view and 
in air; and down below Gowanus Bay, where the shore 
runs into the driveway to Coney Island, the view becomes 
vast and magnificent. This shore road, with its ridges 
and meadows that slope down to the water's edge, is to the 
lower harbor what Riverside Drive is to the Hudson — a 
point of outlook upon natural beauty. The flat water of 
the Upper Bay and the Narrows, with its stately ships 

2a 



354 THE NEW NEW YORK 

moving seaward, the distant heights of Staten Island, 
the near water-edge, with its small craft at anchor, the 
meadows still rank with wild flowers, and (in contrast) 
the road with its artistic bridges and arches, make up a 
picture perhaps superior to the Hudson with its Palisades. 

And what a restful picture ! On summer nights when 
the moon is up and the wind is stirring, what a road this is 
to travel — this winding road to the sea ! The glittering 
waters are like those of Lethe, inducing forgetfulness of the 
city and its business; the ghostly ships with their silver 
sails are full of poetry and romance ; the road flows on in 
serpentine windings through a mystery of light and shadow. 
It is Brooklyn's most beautiful parkway, and some day, 
when it is extended from the bridges to Coney Island, it 
will be possibly the finest shoreway in all the world. 

One can see a future for these roads and drives and 
shoreways. The new city needs them as entrances and 
exits, even more than as pleasure grounds. Wide boule- 
vards in all directions, above ground and below it, are 
crying necessities of transit. About the parks, however, 
one wonders and perhaps has doubts. Will the press of 
business and the crowds of people eventually crush them 
out? In the boroughs of Queens and Richmond there are 
few parks as yet established.* The open country is still 
existent there in thousands of acres. But in crowded 
Manhattan it is very different. In the congested districts 
* Systems of parks have been planned for both. 






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BREATHING SPACES 355 

many of the little parks have been converted into bare 
playgrounds where nothing green grows. It was a neces- 
sity. The tramp of many feet requires a pavement. 
Besides, the park commissioners will tell you of thousands 
of dollars' worth of trees, shrubs, and flowers put out on 
parkways one day, and absolutely disappearing, root and 
branch, before the next day. And, aside from wear and 
vandalism, gases with electricity and the close air of the 
city are fighting against vegetation. Even the rain that 
comes to it is tinged with sulphuric acid by falling through 
city smoke ; and that means destruction to almost every- 
thing — copper, glass, tin roofs, and growing life alike. 
Year by year the trees in the smaller parks seem to look 
more haggard, the grass more bleached and sparse, the 
flowers more like half-starved house plants. Will they 
eventually disappear and the parks be turned into mere 
open areas like Trafalgar Square or the Place de la Con- 
corde? 

Business, to do it justice, is rather fond of the parks. 
Down town it enjoys the pale thin trees and grasses of 
Trinity and St. Paul's, and up town it drives in the Central 
Park with both pride and pleasure. But some day busi- 
ness is to absorb the whole island of Manhattan, the 
residences will be converted into stores and offices, the 
streets will be for motor wagons only, business men will 
walk on second-story platforms, and the women and 
children will be housed beyond the thirty-mile circle. 



356 THE NEW NEW YORK 

In that not-distant day what will become of the parks and 
their growths? Will they be flattened into asphalt and 
swept by the vagrant winds, or will they be built up with 
steel and stone structures? In New York everything keeps 
shifting, moving on, passing away. How shall the parks 
escape the swift transition and the general change? 




Pl. so. Riveusioe Dkivk — (Jkant's Tcjmb 



MUNICIPAL AKT 



Pl. XXI. -^entrance to prospect park, BROOKLYN 



MYJiMOOfla .>J,qAq T03S20HT OT 30kIAHTM3 — .IXX .jS 



CHAPTER XXI 

MUNICIPAL ART 

Unfortunately for the building of the modern city, its 
citizens never know when, where, or how it is to be built. 
If they did, perhaps that ''plan," which is considered so 
essential to every municipal growth, would be forthcoming 
at the start. As it is, the dozen or more people who are to- 
day congregating on a point of land near a stretch of water, 
somewhere in Texas or Minnesota, have no idea of a city 
of a hundred thousand deriving from their beginnings. 
The "plan "to them is superfluous. They build where they 
please, and the town just ''grows," taking whatever form 
necessity or convenience indicates. Almost all the cities 
in the United States have grown in that fashion. 

But after a city has come to importance, commercially 
or otherwise, there is a recognition of its defects, and 
plans are drawn to remedy them by tearing down miles of 
buildings, or appropriating private property for parks, 
driveways, and water fronts. The improvements, how- 
ever, are seldom carried out in their entirety because of 
expense. Baron Haussmann, to be sure, under a ruler 
like Napoleon III, slashed Paris into boulevards; but it 

359 



360 THE NEW NEW YORK 

would be quite impossible to do that now with London or 
Chicago or New York. There is some tearing down and 
widening of streets in all these cities, some following of a 
plan ; but it is usually a compromise which leaves much to 
be desired. The cramped city still exists, and to distract 
attention from its lack of grouping and its want of en- 
trances, or to beautify in spots and places wanting the 
larger opportunity, city boards or commissions sometimes 
indulge in the small ornament of sculpture, fountains, 
lamp-posts, and letter-boxes. 

Usually, however, these boards or commissions that 
have to do with beautifying the city are possessed of small 
power and are required to make bricks without straw — 
to make something out of nothing.^ Occasionally a park 
commission is given an open space which it turns into 
a little park ; but the space is usually some odd angle or 
hole in the ground that no one wants, and which has been 
used as a dumping-ground for years. The value of parks 
in a city is something no longer questioned, and yet, 
strange enough, they are about the last things acquired. 
After the best sites have been taken by warehouses, 
factories, offices, and residences, the left-over marsh, the 
inaccessible hillside, the outgrown cemetery may be used 
for a park, if human ingenuity can convert it into one. 
And it is often astonishing what beauty spots are made 

* The Art Commission in New York has merely the power of approving 
or disapproving plans submitted to it. 



MUNICIPAL ART 361 

out of these abandoned spaces. The Central and the 
Morningside parks in Manhattan are illustrations to the 
point. 

The commissions do not usually have such large areas 
of hght and color to deal with in recomposing the city 
picture. Their opportunities are less magnificent. They 
are oftener asked merely to suggest the place for a new 
piece of sculpture — equestrian or otherwise — or to find 
a site for a memorial arch or a soldiers' monument. Of 
course, there is no money to purchase ground with, and 
consequently they look about for city property, to be had 
perhaps for the asking. Almost invariably the choice falls 
upon the parks ; and the sculpture or the monument goes 
up along a foot-path, or a carriage way, in some prominent 
place where the public must see it whether they like it or 
not. 

It is hard to imagine a worse conjunction of nature and 
art than this. A park is a place where people sometimes go 
to get rid of art, to get away from society and civilization, 
to get back to Mother Earth for a brief spell. Those who 
frequent it are, for the time being at least, more interested 
in the sculpture of the trees than in the modeling of horses' 
legs and men's uniforms. The Metropolitan Museum, 
for instance, filled as it is with valuable collections, has 
no pertinence nor place in the Central Park; and the 
Cleopatra's Needle near it has no significance here nor 
there nor anywhere in America. The Soldiers' Monument 



362 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and Grant's Tomb on the Riverside Drive are not so 
objectionably located, because the drive is less of a park 
than an enlarged boulevard ; but even so it may be ques- 
tioned if they add to the beauty of the front. As for the 
smaller sculptures in the parks — the single figures, busts, 
crouching animals, and smiling publicans that peer out 
from beneath overhanging trees or pose grandly from 
commanding knolls — they should all be removed. The 
cast-iron deer lying on the front lawn, and the white-winged 
angel of the fountain, which meant ''art" to us forty 
years ago, were not more inappropriately placed than the 
present-day statues in the public parks. Both nature 
and art suffer by the unhappy union. There should 
be an absolute divorce, and the parties forbidden to 
remarry. 

Sculpture belongs in the streets and paved squares. 
Originally it was an accessory or complementary art, and 
was used to adorn architecture. Even to-day it is seen 
at its best in conjunction with buildings, or near them. 
A place like Columbus Circle, a triangle as at the meeting 
of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, a Plaza, or a Bowling 
Green, are the proper places for detached groups. Any 
paved square, or open spot devoid of trees, is much to be 
preferred to a park or drive-way. Bronze or marble blends 
with and matches brick or granite better than it does trees 
and grass. Besides, both represent human activities and 
perhaps belong together in what they express. The public 



MUNICIPAL ART 363 

buildings, if not too high, are, of course, appropriate places 
for sculpture, as witness the Municipal Court Building on 
Madison Square, or the Custom House at Bowling Green. 
The City Hall, the Public Library, the Library of Columbia 
University, the Museum of Natural History, St. Patrick's 
Cathedral, St. John's Cathedral, are other places where it 
would not only show to advantage, but materially en- 
hance the architecture. Ordinarily the approaches to 
bridges would be considered excellent opportunities for the 
use of sculpture, but just here we run afoul of trouble, at 
least as regards the bridges of New York. It is the diffi- 
culty of scale, of which mention has already been made, — 
a difficulty that must be met by artists, art societies, and 
city commissions, and somehow reconciled. 

We have borrowed most of our ideas of civic sculpture 
from the older capitals of Europe. The modest scale of 
that sculpture was, and is still, quite appropriate to London 
and Paris and Vienna with their five- and six-story build- 
ings and their small river bridges ; but how does it com- 
port with the twenty-story sky-scrapers and the colossal 
suspension bridges of the new New York ? How shall the 
ordinary street sculpture make itself seen or heard or felt 
amid these enormous masses of steel and granite ? Aside 
from its failure or success in expressing the ideals of a 
twentieth-century people, does it or is it possible for it to 
decorate the city adequately? There is no quarrel with 
that fine European-inspired art of the past. It served 



364 THE NEW NEW YORK 

its purpose well; but is it sufficient for the new era and 
the new people? Let us look at a few examples. 

Twenty years ago Saint Gaudens' "Farragut" on the 
edge of Madison Square was quite in keeping with its 
surrounding buildings. It was to be seen from a distance, 
in an environment that did it no great violence; and 
everyone looked up to it and admired it for its sturdy 
strength and dignity. With its fine pediment and exedra 
it was one statue, at least, in the city that was worth 
looking at as civic decoration. But what about it to-day, 
surrounded as it is by cloud-capped towers and enormous 
buildings ? Is it not dwarfed into a statuette and rendered 
somewhat insignificant ? It is the same statue as twenty 
years ago, but it has suffered a change by being thrown out 
of scale. A similar feeling possesses one about the superb 
"Sherman" in the Plaza, though it is larger in size, and in 
a less confined space, than the ''Farragut." That thin, 
determined rider and the lean, mettlesome horse have 
become absolutely attenuated by the lofty hotels around 
them. The group begins to look like a mantel ornament — 
something for the Metropolitan Museum, rather than the 
Plaza. And there is the Dodge statue in Herald Square, 
another good illustration, if rather bad art. Who sees it 
for the huge shops about it? But yesterday a native 
New Yorker was insisting that there was no statue of any 
kind in Herald Square — at least, he had not noticed one 
there in the last ten years. 







^ 



Pl. 81. — St. John i in. 1) 



\ INE (in construction) 



MUNICIPAL ART 365 

Nor has sculpture fared well when employed on the 
sky-scrapers themselves. What could be done with 
figures on, say, the Flatiron or the Times Building or the 
Trinity Building down town? You may detach an 
eighteen-foot Diana from Madison Square tower by 
using it for a weather vane, and by thus placing it in 
relief against the sky gain an effect of graceful line ; but 
place the Diana, or any other eighteen-foot figure, in a 
niche three hundred and seventy feet from the street, in 
the tower of the Metropolitan Life Building, and what 
would become of it? It is hardly possible to get either 
an expressive or a decorative effect from figures twenty 
stories up in the air. Sculpture was never designed or 
fitted for such structures. These enormous buildings 
have not only outgrown the plastic arts, but all the 
architectural orders as well. Columns and pedestals 
and pilasters, with carved entablatures and pediments, 
fail to eke out the distances or hold as ornament. They 
are inadequate, as, indeed, are almost all of the building 
contrivances of the past when confronted with this new 
problem. The problem, with its decorative effects, must 
be worked out on a new basis, and on a much larger 
and more comprehensive scale. To declare the sky- 
scraper "hideous" and to pray its speedy abolition is to 
evade the question. The tall building is here to stay 
and must be reckoned with. 

Of course, the smaller ''village improvement" features 



366 THE NEW NEW YORK 

that are from time to time discussed by municipal art 
societies, are destined to neglect in New York from sheer 
want of importance. When the city is built up with 
tall buildings, of what vital interest the color of a letter- 
box or the shape of an electrolier? In Florence a brass 
bowl for a barber's sign, hung above a door, looks rather 
pretty, and a wrought-iron design that advertises a lock- 
smith in Nuremberg is quaint and interesting; but what 
could you do with them in front of the Park Row Build- 
ing or the Hotel Astor? How is the man who occupies 
the eighteenth story of the Terminal Building to adver- 
tise his wares except at night by an electric device? It 
is useless to discuss the time-honored sign, whether in 
brass or iron or gold, as either an ornament or an ex- 
crescence, so far as the sky-scraper is concerned. It 
will not be used at all, because it will not be seen. Any- 
one who looks over the new high-building region of New 
York must be impressed by the absence of old-fashioned 
signs. 

Fortunately for New York, those who have the planning 
and the improving of the city in their keeping or on their 
conscience, hunt larger game than signs, house numbers, 
gas fixtures, and commemorative tablets. They have an 
idea that New York is to be a great city, with its business 
center located in Manhattan, and that it is vitally impor- 
tant there be more and larger exits and entrances. With 
that thought they have planned new avenues, new 




Pl. 82. — Wakd's Pilgui.m, the Central Pakk 



MUNICIPAL ART 367 

wharves and water fronts, new methods of relieving the 
congestion of freight as well as of passengers, new bridge 
approaches and terminals. In connection with this, 
both for use and beauty, they have planned the widening 
of Fifth Avenue, the removal of the Central Park walls 
and the making of broad parkways on either side, the 
linking, by the bridges, of Manhattan and its park systems 
with the other boroughs and their park systems. Still 
further, they hope by locating new city buildings, to 
produce a civic center from which avenues shall radiate 
through the greater city, touching other centers in the 
different boroughs. Finally, they hope to make monu- 
ments of city art out of school buildings, libraries, engine 
houses, and other public edifices ; and to give them proper 
setting by grouping them in smaller centers about parks 
or open squares. 

All this is quite as it should be, provided it is carried 
out on a sufficiently large scale — a scale in proportion 
to the new city. Presumably, many of the plans will 
never be executed, and possibly some formalism will be 
avoided thereby. The tendency of any plan is to produce 
rigidity and to destroy picturesqueness of which New 
York is at present such a fine example; but there is no 
doubt about the planned city being the more convenient 
and the more impressive at first blush. Paris became 
''a city of magnificent distances" after Haussmann's 
surgery, though perhaps it is now a little stupid in its 



368 THE NEW NEW YORK 

uniformity and lacking in a former charm of color. New 
York, under the "plan" of 1811, was for many years a 
dull collection of checker-board squares until the change 
in the sky line made by the tall buildings and the bridges 
relieved its monotony. That plan was as bad as, pre- 
sumably, any new one is good; but it is not desirable 
to have too much regularity if the city is to be interesting 
and beautiful. 

And what is to make the new city beautiful if we do 
away with so many of the art features of the past ? The 
green parks seem destined to destruction by congestion 
of population and plant-food poisoning; isles of safety, 
drinking fountains, statues, lamps, signs, and all the 
small art of the older city seem to lack in carrying power ; 
an effect of composition by the grouping of buildings, 
such as one saw at the Columbian Exposition, or such 
as is now becoming apparent with less formality in the 
placing of Columbia University, seems possible only in 
isolated spots because of the item of expense. What then 
is the new beauty of the city to be ? Wherein shall lie 
the secret of its outer attractiveness? 

Those questions are for the future to answer; and yet 
an inclination is apparent, an example has been set. The 
scale of the new city has been established in majestic 
proportions. The high buildings and the huge bridges 
are its measure. The future aqueducts, railways, tunnels, 
boulevards, avenues, squares, circles, will have to conform 




A^. iT] ^L-4 




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Pl. 83. — Fountain on Riveusidh Dkivk 



MUNICIPAL ART 369 

to the established scale. Out of this shall come some- 
thing in grandeur as yet quite uncomprehended. The 
possibilities of the new architecture are the possibilities 
of the new city. Not the size of it alone, not its mass, 
shall be its sole impressive feature. There is no limit to 
the forms that may be evolved, the groupings and mid- 
air compositions that may be brought into existence, 
the lights and shadows that may be thus created. The 
bridges already have grace of line, and the buildings com- 
manding height. That which is to come will be no less 
impressive. 

To gigantic form must be added the further possibihty of 
color. Heretofore it has been used only in spots, but there 
is now something more than a chance of its use in large 
masses. The opportunity offered by the bridges suggests 
it, and some of the sky-scrapers already realize it. With 
walls that are used only as fire or weather shields, the 
architect is not pinned down to stone or brick. Almost 
any material and almost any stain or hue may be made 
available. Given the high buildings in different color- 
ings, with those colorings shown not only in full sunlight 
but under shadow, and one can imagine a picturesque 
effect more imposing than any that has ever gone before 
us in the world's history. 

This would be an expression of municipal art in terms 
of commercialism and possibly objectionable to some 
for that very reason. But why? A city should grow 

2b 



370 THE NEW NEW YORK 

up and out of its necessities, and assert itself and its 
character in what guise or garb it needs or craves. Rome 
expressed itself in one kind of art, Paris in quite another 
kind. Shall the great port of the west not express itself 
in still another? More than once has commerce out of 
its objects of use created (perhaps unconsciously) objects 
of beauty. The beauty comes with the integrity of the 
use and the frank avowal of the purpose. It has been 
so in the past and there is no reason to believe that it 
will not be so again in the future. 




Pl. 84. SOLDIKUS' MoNfMKNr, RlVKHSlDK DuiVK 



FOR MERE CULTURE 



Pl. XXII. — university of new YORK 



>iaOY W3H 30 YTI2513VIHU — .liXX .jS 



CHAPTER XXII 

FOR MERE CULTURE 

New York has outgrown, or is outgrowing, its smaller 
art, but it must not be thought that this has been boxed 
up and sent to the junk shop or the warehouse. On the 
contrary, it is still in place, and the bulk of it is treasured 
and admired. Every little angle of green grass is consid- 
ered an emerald in the city's girdle, every statue is, more 
or less, a title of distinction, and almost every marble 
temple or terra-cotta palace doing service as a bank or 
an office, is pointed at with pride. And not without some 
show of reason, for much of it is good, even though wrongly 
conceived and badly placed. For instance : — 

The marble bank building on Fifth Avenue and Thirty- 
Fourth Street is a very respectable classic edifice which, if 
placed on a Roman hill, or even a Brooklyn height, might 
look rather commanding; but what does it on Fifth 
Avenue, surrounded by sky-scrapers, squeezed into a lot 
much too small for it, with its approach, and even its 
steps, cut off by the sidewalk? The Clearing House on 
Cedar Street is not a bad imperial arch, but there is no 
vista through it, no approach for it, and no part of it is in 

373 



374 THE NEW NEW YORK 

focus because of the narrowness of the street. This last 
statement is true again of the Chamber of Commerce in 
Liberty Street, with its statues of Jay, Hamilton, and 
Chnton perched on the fagade, or the Stock Exchange on 
Broad Street, with its sculptured figures in the pediment 
seen chiefly in detached feet and hands that project over 
the ledge. Both buildings are distorted in their placings, 
wanting in perspective, and ineffective, though a zeal 
for art inspired them. 

Some of the new buildings, however, have fared better 
— the Public Library, for instance. It has sufficient 
frontage and depth, and can be seen from Fifth Avenue, 
though it would look more attractive in a larger frame. 
Commercialism did not dictate either its style or its size. 
It was built quite as much for beauty as for service, and 
the citizens of New York seem well pleased that it is 
beautiful. Everyone looks at it with pleasure as he 
passes by. Art, more than patriotism, also dictated 
the clean-cut Washington Arch farther down the avenue, 
small as it now appears, and perhaps had more to do 
with the building of Madison Square Garden than con- 
siderations of box-office receipts. Some of the purely 
commercial ventures on Fifth Avenue have paid the 
highest tribute possible for them to the aesthetics of 
architecture, as, for examples, the Tiffany and Gorham 
buildings — both of them excellent in design. As for 
the new business places, and even some of the West Side 



FOR MERE CULTURE 375 

factories^ they, with club-houses like the University and 
the Metropolitan, and the recently built residences along 
the avenues and the side streets, unite in proclaiming a 
desire for art if not always its fulfillment. 

Among the detached sculpture in the parks and streets, 
bad as much of it always was, and insignificant as most 
of it has become, there are still some notable examples 
which people do not care to forget. Aside from the works 
of Saint Gaudens, there is the ''Nathan Hale" of Mac- 
Monnies in City Hall Park, Browne's fine statue of ''Wash- 
ington" in Union Square (the first equestrian statue cast 
in America), the "Hunt Memorial" by French on the 
east wall of the Central Park, Ward's "Pilgrim" within 
the park. There is no taint of trade about such works. 
Even the artless effigies in stone and bronze, with the 
fountains and monuments which are strewn promiscu- 
ously about the city, do not speak of profits and percent- 
ages. Good or bad, they were put forth in a proper 
spirit, not for gain, but in desire of beauty. 

But the fancy for the things of art goes beyond a statue 
in the park, or a classic lamp-post on the avenue. There 
is the huge Metropolitan Museum, full of art-plunder to 
the doors, which shows a sense of acquisition if not 
perhaps the most critical judgment. The Metropolitan 
is not only the one famous museum in America, but, by 
virtue of its valuable contents, is fast becoming of world 
importance. It has money endowments, many wealthy 



376 THE NEW NEW YORK 

patrons, and is continually enlarging its collections and 
extending its usefulness. In such circumstances it cannot 
fail as a dominant factor in the art-education of the 
people. That New Yorkers enjoy it and profit by it is 
evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of visitors that 
go to it. It is, all told, the most popular place in the 
city. 

There are many other semi-public collections of mar- 
bles, pictures, porcelains, and antiquities in the city, 
such as those of the New York Historical Society, or 
the Lenox Library, or the City Hall ; but all of these put 
together do not equal the quantities of fine art in the New 
York houses. There are hundreds of galleries of pictures, 
with bronzes, fabrics, and furniture, in individual hands, 
which do educational service in a quiet way among 
coteries of friends. These collections are famous for their 
pictures by the Fontainebleau-Barbizon painters, for 
Manet and Monet, for old Dutch and Flemish painters, 
for old masters of Italy and Spain. The purchase of 
these works has, in recent years, set the European art 
markets agog. Almost every masterpiece that turns up 
in the auction room is bid in for New York, until Europe 
has cried out against the draining of its resources. But 
pictures, marbles, tapestries, porcelains, furniture, medals, 
plate, rugs, keep coming to this port. The result is that 
New York has become the great art market of the world. 
The galleries of the dealers are on almost every block of 






F 




FOR MERE CULTURE 377 

middle Fifth Avenue, and the trade in antiquities (even 
forged ones) has become very large. 

The city is not only the chief market for foreign 
art, but it is the chief center of domestic production. 
Here are located not only the museums, but the societies 
Hke the National Academy of Design, the New York 
Water Color Club, the American Water Color Society, 
the Architectural League, the Society of Decorative 
Art. Here also are the art schools of the National Acad- 
emy, the Art Students' League, the Cooper Union, and 
many others. There are upwards of ten thousand art- 
ists in the city, working in their professions, making a 
living by various art industries; and thousands of other 
people are interested with them in exhibiting, or ex- 
plaining, or selling their work. If all these various 
manifestations of artistic interest were added together, 
one might be pardoned for thinking of New York as 
a new Athens or Florence on the shore of this western 
world. 

And what about the interest in music and the drama ? 
Is there any other city, except possibly Berlin, that sup- 
ports, as New York does, two (three, if we include the old 
Academy) opera-houses, half a dozen conservatories of 
music, two dozen musical societies, and thirty musically 
inclined churches ? Perhaps there is not such a universal 
love for the art as these comprehensive figures would 
imply. New York is not so musically set as Dresden or 



378 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Vienna or Buda-Pesth. Many thousands of its people 
care little for it; and yet the fact remains that the best 
musicians and singers come here, the best operas, ora- 
torios, and chamber-music are given here, and perhaps 
as good orchestral music as the age is capable of is heard 
here. True enough, there are plenty of so-called music 
halls that beat out sentimental arias to please people 
of crude tastes; but the better New York, even though 
submerged to the neck in business, still has ears left for 
Wagner or Richard Strauss or Debussy. 

And it always had eyes for the theater — that great 
modern educator of those who ''never have time to read." 
There are some fifty or sixty theaters in the borough of 
Manhattan where something is being performed every 
evening, and several afternoons of the week — the last 
but not the least of these to come forward being the new 
Endowed Theater on Central Park West,, which is dedi- 
cated to the highest ideals of the drama. Lest this large 
number of playhouses give the impression that the city 
has gone daft on amusements, or turned completely 
over to the Evil One, as some would have it, it is worth 
while stating that in the borough of Manhattan there are 
also twelve hundred churches where the Gospel is preached 
to some half million of people. However much New 
Yorkers may be devoted to dollar-getting, they have time 
and inclination for the play and the sermon. 

New York makes money out of science by applying 



FOR MERE CULTURE 379 

it in industry, and does it very cleverly too ; yet it spends 
large sums in exploiting pure science with no money 
thought back of the endeavor. Look at the magnificent 
Museum of Natural History with its famous collections; 
or the wonderful Botanical Garden in the Bronx with its 
laboratories, herbarium, libraries, and thousands of living 
plants; or the Aquarium at the Battery, the largest and 
most complete in the world, not excepting the famous 
Aquario of Naples; or even the ''Zoo" in the Bronx, 
where the grown-ups go quite as frequently as the chil- 
dren ! Half of the learned societies and scientific associa- 
tions and engineering clubs in the country have their 
homes in New York. Here new discoveries are demon- 
strated in the laboratory and explained from the lecture 
platform; here new theories are discussed by societies, 
and the discussions pubhshed in the journals of their pro- 
ceedings; here new hypotheses in mechanics, electrics, 
microscopies, or any other phase of pure science are for- 
mulated. Even the fields of discussion in geology, eth- 
nology, political and ethical science, or the more abstruse 
philosophy of rehgion with its theological corollaries, 
are here. 

Let us go a little farther and see what this city of trade 
is doing for general education — doing for mere culture. 
It is the great center of the New World for the print- 
ing and publishing of newspapers and magazines. 
There are in the greater city fifty-two daily and ninety- 



380 THE NEW NEW YORK 

six weekly newspapers, with eighty or more magazines. 
Among these are the best newspapers and periodicals in 
the country. They are issued in all languages, and con- 
tain enough miscellaneous information to make a good- 
sized encyclopaedia ; but vast as is their influence in edu- 
cation, the average business man in New York does not 
take them too seriously. He looks them over, reading 
an article here and there. He has, however, a more 
abiding interest in books. They are articles of trade, 
like the newspapers; but New York is well disposed to 
value them as matters of culture, too. Its many pubhc 
libraries and their liberal support bear witness to this 
spirit. Aside from the large Ubrary on Fifth Avenue, 
to contain the Astor, Tilden, and Lenox foundations, 
aside from the fifty or sixty Carnegie branches of it, there 
are over fifty other public or semi-public hbraries in Man- 
hattan, containing hundreds of thousands of books, on 
all subjects, and almost every one of them free to readers. 
This does not include the libraries of the many clubs or 
private schools or colleges or societies, where admission 
is obtained only by card. 

This publishing of many periodicals and books in 
New York results in the city being well supplied with 
editors and authors. At one time Boston had the dis- 
tinction of being the home of American writers, but to-day 
New York may be considered the great gathering place. 
They come from all over the United States, drawn by the 



FOR MERE CULTURE 381 

intellectual advantages of the city, and in spite of its 
(to them) rather repellent commerce and wealth. They 
gather at clubs like the Century and the Authors, where 
with painters, sculptors, architects, lawyers, and public 
men generally, they create an atmosphere of their own 
which is sometimes described in magazine articles under 
such a caption perhaps as "Literary New York." That 
atmosphere is a decided influence in the city, though not 
known on the Stock Exchange nor revealed in any for- 
eigner's three-weeks impressions of the city, written for 
Continental consumption. Indeed, some of our million- 
aires are not exempt from it, but a part of it. They may 
even think that, rather than money, their title to dis- 
tinction. 

Still another step, at the risk of becoming wearisome, 
to show what this Gotham of dollars-and-cents does for 
definite and systematic education among its rising gen- 
erations. Any city may encourage browsing in public 
libraries or museums, or listening in lecture rooms and 
theaters; but New York does more than that. It has, 
for instance, a school system, working thoroughly and 
efficiently in some six hundred schoolhouses, which, with 
about ten thousand teachers, is giving a primary educa- 
tion, at least, to some six hundred thousand school 
children. 

The expense of this is large (about twenty-nine mil- 
hons of dollars a year), and it is no trivial test of New 



382 THE NEW NEW YORK 

York's desire for knowledge for its children that it sup- 
ports this expense without complaint. Furthermore, it 
insists that all children in the city between the ages of 
eight and fourteen shall attend, — shall receive the equip- 
ment of a common-school education, at least. To enforce 
this requirement it employs thirty or more attendance 
officers whose duty it is to bring in the delinquents. 
For those who cannot attend in the daytime there are 
night schools; and all winter there are lecture courses 
in the schoolhouses, on almost every conceivable sub- 
ject, free to anyone who will come, parents as well as 
children. Any student who wishes to go higher than the 
public schools has the opportunity of doing so. There 
are a dozen high schools, a normal college for women, and 
the city college for men, with industrial schools of various 
kinds and descriptions. There is practically no limit to 
what the ambitious youth may attain in education ; and 
that, too, without cost. 

The number of private schools in the city would be 
difficult to estimate; but in Manhattan there are at 
least fifty (some of them with local and some with na- 
tional reputations), where a secondary education is taught 
to thousands of pupils. Many of these schools prepare 
for college, and New York has a goodly number of insti- 
tutions of collegiate rank. There is Columbia University 
to start with — one of the largest and best in the United 
States. It was founded before the Revolution, and its 




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FOR MERE CULTURE 383 

beginnings, with six professors and a handful of students, 
were extremely modest, as were those of New York itself ; 
but to-day it has nearly seven hundred instructors on its 
faculty list and, with its adjuncts, Barnard and Teachers 
colleges, and its schools of law and medicine, over eight 
thousand students. Its student body is made up from all 
nationalities, from all quarters of the world, and the sub- 
jects taught include almost everything dreamed of in the 
science of pedagogics. It is a great university, and it 
has a very positive influence upon New York life, not- 
withstanding the common belief that the city is only 
amenable to the persuasion of business. 

Next to Columbia comes New York University with sev- 
eral thousand students and its group of fine buildings on 
University Heights ; and not far away is the College of the 
City of New York (with several thousand more students), 
newly equipped and newly housed on Washington Heights. 
These are the principal colleges, and yet there might be 
others mentioned, like St. John's College and St. Francis 
Xavier, with many professional schools of high rank. 
There are several important theological seminaries and 
law schools, with colleges of medicine, of dentistry, of 
pharmacy, and the like, outside of the universities proper. 
Besides these there are postgraduate schools, corre- 
spondence schools, summer schools, university-extension 
schools, trade and training schools. In fact, if one had 
the actual statistics for all the educational doings in the 



384 THE NEW NEW YORK 

city they would go far in bolstering up an argument to 
prove that New York was school mad. 

The professional and trade schools, like the business 
colleges that flourish on every block, are more or less 
designed to fit the student for money-making; but the 
bulk of the study in New York is, perhaps, more for cul- 
ture than for commerce. At any rate, a large part of it 
is never used as a means of gain, but rather as a means of 
understanding and appreciating life. There are plenty 
of people in New York who think in terms of philosophy 
though engaged most of their time in details of trade. 
Gaining a livelihood is not incompatible with living intel- 
lectually, and knowing how to figure out a commission 
does not necessarily mean an ignorance of everything 
else in existence. 

But the world does not care to consider statistics of 
education, nor does it like the revising of its opinions. 
It made up its mind long ago that New York was a busi- 
ness center; and, success in one department usually 
arguing failure in every other department, it followed, 
naturally enough, that New York was, outside of business, 
a woful ignoramus. A reputation, whether deserved 
or not, is a difficult thing to get rid of. No matter how 
much London or Paris may grow in grace or change in 
appearance, its reputation for ugliness or beauty, for 
dirt or cleanliness, for piety or wickedness, goes right on 
in the rut of a hundred years ago. Chicago, for example. 




Pl. 87. — College of Citv of New York 



FOR MERE CULTURE 385 

has the name of being a sordid spot of earth with a pack- 
ing-house soul, a wheat-pit mind, and a taste for things 
of magnitude rather than of quahty; but one wonders 
just what percentage of its people are so constituted. 
Is Chicago, as a whole, more avid of the dollar than any 
other city, here or elsewhere? Has it less taste than 
Cincinnati, or more love of the grandiose than San Fran- 
cisco? Again, Boston's proximity to Harvard has given 
it the name of being our first city in culture, as Philadel- 
phia's connection with the early government of the coun- 
try has estabhshed its reputation for family traditions; 
but is it a fact that Boston always asks: What do you 
know? or Philadelphia: Who were your grand-par- 
ents? Are not such questions asked occasionally in 
every city of the country? 

By the same rumor-tongue the stranger in New York 
is told that the only inquiry made here is as to the extent 
of one's wealth ; but, outside of the business world, how 
many people ask that question seriously? And, when 
asked, how many people care about what answer is given ? 
Is it not a fact that many a prominent citizen in New 
York, many a highly esteemed leader in science, literature, 
or the public service, is remarkable for poverty rather 
than riches? Even in the smart world of fashionable 
society there are scores of people who have no money to 
speak of, and yet are welcomed for their manners or their 
taste or their mentality. In fact, fashionable society, 

2c 



386 THE NEW NEW YORK 

and the man in the street who perhaps is not society in 
any sense, join in admiration of the poor man, especially 
if he is a person of intellectual and moral quality. And, 
by way of contrast, who does not know his group of mil- 
lionaires in the city who are absolutely ignored in the 
city's life — people who have nothing to their credit but 
a bank account, and who never rise to any position 
whatever ? 

The truth is that in those things that stand for American 
ideals or their absence. New York is not very different 
from any other city in the United States. It has Boston's 
culture, and Philadelphia's longing after immortality 
through ancestor worship, onl}'- trebled and quadrupled 
numerically. It has also Chicago's wheat-pit mind and 
love of sheer bigness, but once more the disposition is 
doubly intensified by numbers. None of these cities 
have been exactly reputed, for the single sentence that is 
supposed to epitomize is always extravagant in statement. 
The cities have good, bad, and indifferent qualities, all 
mixed together; and, like the average American citizen, 
they are perhaps neither very good nor yet very bad, but 
of a middle quality. New York is larger and contains 
more possibilities for good and for evil than the others — 
that is about the only difference. 




I'l. NS. — Ham. of Famk, r.NivEUsiTY of New York 



THE ISLANDS 



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CHAPTER XXIII 

THE ISLANDS 

If New York has little repute as a city of culture, it has 
perhaps still less as a city of brotherly love. Its head 
may be thought shrewd enough in business matters, but 
whoever accused the city of having a heart or a soul? 
Who, for instance, thinks of it as wasting any effort or 
energy on the unfortunate, the unsuccessful, the in- 
competent ? The prevalent belief is that those who can- 
not swim go down in the big maelstrom, and no one in the 
city puts out a hand to save them. But, once more, the 
prevalent belief is wrong. 

It is doubtful if any other city in the world does as much 
for humanity through goodness of heart as this same city 
of New York. Its charities are extraordinary in their 
number and their extent. The New York Charities Di- 
rectory, which contains a classified and descriptive list 
of the philanthropic, educational, and religious resources 
of the city, is a six-hundred-page volume entirely filled 
with the addresses and officers of the various institutions, 
Tolman and Hemstreet's Better New York is a three- 
hundred-page book giving the places where help of one sort 

389 



390 - THE NEW NEW YORK 

or another is obtainable. From it one gathers the impres- 
sion that there is hardly a block in the city that does not 
contain a place of refuge of some name and nature for the 
sick, the weary, or the out-of-work. This is all more or 
less organized charity, administered by societies, or by the 
city itself. Add to it the giving and the helping not put 
down in books, the good-intentioned efforts of thousands 
of people in an individual capacity, and the charity work 
of the city takes on vast proportions. It seems as though 
almost every other person in the city was being helped, 
or ''uplifted," or given "a chance" for life and happiness. 

That much of this charity is mistaken in purpose and 
does more harm than good may be quite true. Half the 
cities in the country, by their indiscriminate charity, have 
pauperized their poorer citizens, just as half the cities 
themselves have been pauperized by the gifts of million- 
aires. The proper way to help humanity is not to feed it, 
clothe it, and carry its burdens, but to insist upon its help- 
ing itself. However, that is not matter for present discus- 
sion. The point that would be made is that New York, 
foolishly or otherwise, gives to charity in figures that are 
almost incredible ; helps the needy with more hands than 
a Hindu god ; and does it through pure kindness of heart, 
through sympathetic feeling for humanity — a wish to 
make others better and happier. 

It must not be inferred from this that all New York's 
helping is of a foolish and unconsidered nature. On the 




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Vl. SU. lii;uL()i;'s Island - Statuk of Liukuty 



THE ISLANDS 391 

contrary, the bulk of it is carefully planned and exactly car- 
ried out in accordance with the best sociological principles. 
The sick and disabled are always to be looked after, cost 
what it may, and consequently the hospital is always a 
necessity ; but its management is to be economic as well as 
therapeutic. Just so with the criminal and vicious classes, 
the insane, the foundlings, the aged, the crippled. They 
must be housed in jails or penitentiaries, prisons or asy- 
lums, homes or retreats ; but while liberality must prevail 
the cost is to be exactly counted, and the results obtained 
are to be accurately reported. This is not a matter of 
charity alone, but of government, of the best municipal 
administration. 

One expects scientific management in the large hospitals, 
of which the borough of Manhattan has some seventy-five 
or more — some of them endowed, and many of them ad- 
ministered by trustee boards composed of prominent 
citizens. They command the best surgical and medical 
talent in the land, and they are more or less free to patients 
of any race or color. Such institutions as St. Luke's, 
Roosevelt, the New York, the J. Hood Wright Memorial, 
the Presbyterian hospitals, need neither apology nor de- 
scription ; they are famed for their excellence. 

Bellevue and the various hospitals on Blackwell's 
Island belong to the city, belong in the Department of 
Public Charities, and are just as efficiently administered 
as the Roosevelt or Presbyterian types in Manhattan. 



392 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The visitor to them will find little that he may take ex- 
ception to. The buildings answer their purpose well, the 
service is efficient, the machinery the most modern. 
There are homcEopathic as well as allopathic hospitals, 
maternity and tuberculosis hospitals, alcoholic and nerv- 
ous-disease hospitals, with hospitals for the incurables 
and convalescent, and a training school for nurses. 

The efficiency shown in these city hospitals is carried 
out in the other institutions on Blackwell's Island. The 
workhouse is large, clean, and decent; the asylums are 
comfortable and commodious ; and as for the penitentiary 
with its twelve hundred inmates, it is healthful, sanitary, 
and orderly in every way. That much is to be said also 
for the institutions farther up the river, where the delin- 
quents and the young degenerates are housed, taught to 
work, and, in measure, reformed. 

The islands where these institutions are located are in 
summer the coolest and the greenest spots in the city, 
and at any season they are beautiful in their settings. 
All of which puts the notion into one's head that the city 
has given up to its crippled and aged, its thugs and thieves, 
its paupers and prisoners, the most livable and lovable 
portions of the town, keeping for itself only some flat and 
rather hot districts on the upper avenues. This looks 
like a great deal of self-denial in favor of the outcast ; but, 
unfortunately, the motive will not bear critical analysis. It 
is to be feared that the New Yorkers put the prisoners and 



THE ISLANDS 393 

the paupers on the islands because no one else wanted those 
spots. They were waste places that could be spared very 
readily; and besides, over there 'Hhe slovenly unhand- 
some corse" could not come betwixt the wind and the no- 
bility. People do not want their public institutions too 
close to them. 

As for islands near a city, they have never been popular 
resorts, except for picnic parties. Humanity of the hermit 
variety occasionally exists upon them ; but the true city- 
dweller is a person of gregarious tastes and loves to flock 
along a dusty street rather than a water front. Moreover, 
the islands are inaccessible, hard to come and go from, 
and, also, they are '^ dreadfully lonely." But they are good 
healthful places for the indigent and the aged, and admi- 
rable spots in which to bring sinners to repentance. Hence 
their appropriateness for prisons and hospitals. Let the 
blind and the halt have them. So long as the free citizen 
can smell gasolene and see asphalt on Fifth Avenue, he 
will not miss the sea breezes and green grass of the islands. 

The New York people have always been leaving the best 
places behind them in their rush for the spot that is for the 
moment the most frequented or fashionable. In the 
ancient days they abandoned the Battery, one of the 
finest residential sites in the city, to crowd around City 
Hall Park and Warren Street. Then they retreated, step 
by step, along the shopways and avenues, from Bleecker 
Street through Union and Madison squares and Bryant 



394 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Park to the Central Park, where for the moment they are 
pausing to catch breath. As for the Riverside Drive, it 
has been recently discovered, and declared beautiful; 
but many people think it ''quite impossible" as a place of 
residence because one's friends will not come out there to 
call ! Morningside Park, again, is pretty, good enough 
for a group of college buildings to face upon, or for a 
Harlem promenade, but much too far from the Plaza. 

Such fancies have bothered New Yorkers in the past, 
and are doing so to-day. Under the circumstances it is not 
to be wondered at that no one wants the islands, and that 
they have been given over to various undesirable citizens 
who are kept in more or less restraint by a water front and 
a stone wall. Instead of being parked and used by the 
public, like the beautiful Margarethen-Insel atBuda-Pesth, 
they have been utilized and rendered forbidding by the 
city or national government. Up the river following the 
prisons and asylums there is a decent little island doing 
service as a potter's field, and not far from it, on another 
island, the city is building a veritable mountain out of 
street refuse. Down the bay the smaller islands are given 
over to immigrants and quarantine patients, or guns and 
forts, or smells and factories. 

It is something of a disgrace to New York in general, 
and the borough of Richmond in particular, that Staten 
Island, altogether the most beautifully located ground in 
or about the greater city, should be almost surrounded 



THE ISLANDS 395 

at its water's edge by smoke-belching factories. No one 
wishes to question the value and necessity of factories, even 
though they do smoke and smell disagreeably; but why have 
them at the harbor entrance where all the world comes in 
or goes out? And why should they occupy the most at- 
tractive site in the greater city when there are so many 
other places that would answer their purpose just as 
well? 

Of course, these factories go along with the commerce 
of the port and contribute to it, and on gray days they are 
picturesque enough with their tall chimneys trailing steam 
and smoke into the mist ; but some of the residents of 
Staten Island would gladly exchange the profits and the 
pictures they make for less soot and a clearer air. As it is, 
another kind of exchange is being made. Many of the in- 
habitants are moving away, and to-day, on the west side of 
the island, one may see deserted mansions with sagging 
roofs, leaning columns, and broken windows, the very 
paint being eaten from them by the smoke-gases of oil and 
chemical factories coming from across the Kill von Kull 
and Arthur Kill. 

But for this almost complete circle of nuisances Staten 
Island would be an ideal spot for suburban residences, 
for little towns, perhaps for a great city. In its extreme 
length it is thirteen miles and in its greatest width eight 
miles, there being, all told, some sixty square miles of it. 
It is greatly diversified by hills, some of them four hundred 



396 THE NEW NEW YORK 

feet high ; and from their ridges and summits wonderful 
views are obtained. To the east is the Narrows with the 
Upper and Lower bays, and all that that implies in pass- 
ing ships and sails. Here the transatlantic steamers, the 
coasters, the schooners, the round-the-Horn ships come 
and go all day long. Far out, beyond Sandy Hook and the 
light-ship, the black smoking funnels and the gray sails 
can be seen rising from the sea as they come or sinking 
below the verge as they go. Over the Narrows, over 
Coney Island, over Long Island, the view extends; but 
ever the eyes keep returning to the distant sea, the trail 
of smoke, the glint of sails along the rim. To the south 
are the hills of Navesink and the low shores of New Jersey, 
to the west the marshes, and to the northeast the distant 
New York. 

The interior of Staten Island is one of the most positive 
contrasts one can meet with in the greater city. It is 
difficult to realize that the woods and ponds, the farms and 
gardens and country places, that one sees over there, are 
really a part of New York. It is like a country district 
in the Mohawk Valley, with plowed fields, meadows, 
cattle, and timbered hilltops. The woods and fields are 
not trimmed or swept or bridle-pathed or terraced or laid 
out for tennis and golf. It is not a park ; it is what is left 
of primeval nature. Daisies are growing in the lowlands, 
violets are blooming along the wood roads, and wild roses 
are nodding and bending along the fences. The brooks 



THE ISLANDS 397 

find their own way to the sea, the squirrels hunt their own 
provender, and the song birds build their nests quite un- 
observed. 

For not a great many people penetrate into the interior 
of Staten Island. It is the borough of Richmond and has 
something more than seventy thousand inhabitants; but 
New Yorkers hardly yet regard it as part of the city, 
because it is five miles from the Battery and has to be 
reached by a ferry-boat, time twenty-two minutes. Oc- 
casionally the man in the motor goes chasing through it at 
breakneck speed, seeing nothing except the signboards 
of the automobile club ; but those who come over to the 
island for a quiet stroll along the wood roads and through 
the fields are very few. The city dweller likes to think 
about such things when reading his evening paper by 
the fire, and to hear him talk on occasion one might 
imagine that in the city he was in durance vile; but 
at heart he does not care too much for nature. He 
likes people better than stumps, and, consequently, takes 
the suburbs and the islands in homoeopathic doses. 

Staten Island from a steamer's deck coming up the bay 
looks almost like fairyland. Everything about it is bright 
and sparkling, the greenswards of Forts Tompkins and 
Wadsworth — about as gun proof as so many golf bunkers 
— are graceful, and the quarantine station seems a haven 
of refuge cut out of a picture book. Moreover, that part 
of the island is comparatively free of factories and the air is 



398 THE NEW NEW YORK 

passing clear. Even the barren little quarantine islands 
lying down in the Lower Bay have a romantic or pictur- 
esque look seen through that air, and under that brilliant 
sunlight. Yet, strange to relate, there has always been a 
fight on hand to keep these islands and waters of the 
harbor entrance from being polluted or infected or 
destroyed. At one time scows dumped refuse there; 
now sewage, factory drainage, and smallpox patients lay 
claim to them. And still they survive as things of beauty 
to gladden the eye of the returning traveler and make him 
proud of his native land. 

The islands in the Upper Bay are better known, but not 
much more frequented than those in the East River. 
Bedloe's Island catches its daily tale of tourists who 
go there to see the Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi; 
but few natives of the city have ever set foot upon 
it. It used to be a place of execution — a suggestion of 
how the forefathers of the present citizen regarded the 
beauty spots in the harbor. Now it is only famous for its 
statue, which would have looked so much better almost 
anywhere else. It should have been planted squarely at 
the extreme end of the Battery, where the ships coming up 
the harbor could have passed almost under it. Then its 
colossal proportions would have been like those of an 
Osiride figure in front of an Egyptian temple — an effective 
feature in introducing the massive architecture back of it. 
Placed where it is there is only a mild wonder about its size, 



THE ISLANDS 399 

because it is two miles off from the Battery, and a mile or 
more from the steamer channel. 

Governor's Island is a picturesque spot, seen from 
Brooklyn Heights or the Battery, and yet another place 
that the citizen leaves undisturbed. The United States 
government occupies it for military purposes, and admis- 
sion to it is to be had only by a written pass. It is covered 
with trees, officers' quarters, parade grounds, and guns. 
There are some harbor defenses located there, and on the 
western side is old Castle William, a cheese-box fort made 
of sandstone, which is now used as a prison, presumably 
because it is good for nothing else. The island is not a 
martial-looking camp. To-day it is quite as peaceful as 
its neighbor, the gunless Battery of bellicose birth. 

The best known and most frequented of all the islands 
has not now the slightest characteristic of an island. It is 
the fag-end of a sand spit pushed out into the Lower Bay, 
and is called Coney Island ^ possibly because in the memory 
of man no conies were ever known there or elsewhere in the 
eastern United States. Originally there was quite a strip 
of this sand spit extending along the south shore of Long 
Island and cut here and there by inlets. Now it is divided 
into different localities with names like Manhattan Beach, 
Rockaway, and Brighton Beach. The western extremity 
of it only is known as Coney Island. Years ago it was re- 

^ The Dutch of it was " Conijnen Eylant. " The rabbits upon it were 
doubtless mi; iaken for conies. 



400 THE NEW NEW YORK 

sorted to as a bathing beach, but in more recent times it 
has passed into a show place where all sorts of freaks and 
fads are seen and queer spectacular entertainments are 
given. It is the home of Mardi Gras; it is the Pike, the 
Midway, and the Great White Way all combined. It nods 
by day but wakes up at twilight with thousands of electric 
lights in dazzHng forms, and scores of variety shows to 
please the multitude. Its easy access by railway from 
New York, and its cool nights in summer, make it a 
favorite stamping ground for the gilded youth of the city, 
who go to it in crowds and mobs — sometimes over a 
hundred thousand a day. But there is nothing very 
unique about it. Every city of any size has some such 
place where young heads are for a time made less con- 
scious of their emptiness. 

Over in Jamaica Bay to the east of Coney Island there 
are plenty of genuine islands, belonging to the greater city, 
that are not doing service of any kind. Eventually these 
little sand-and-mud areas in the bay may be turned into 
dock foundations, and a new port for New York built 
around them ; but just now the natives dig clams on them, 
and hunters in long boots sometimes gun over them for 
snipes and ducks. They are still in a state of nature, 
though within the city's limits and not twelve miles from 
the high ridge of sky-scrapers on Lower Broadway. 

Always contrasts, contrasts, contrasts. In New Yo;-^- 
they never seem to cease and determine. 




Pi 



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THE LARGER CITY 



Pl. XXIV. -THE ELEVATED ROAD AT ONE HUNDRED AND 
TWENTY-FIFTH STREET 



QUA G:^5iaMUH 3HO TA QAOa a3TAV3J3 3HT — .VFXX .jT 
T335lTa HT3n-YTM3WT 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE LARGER CITY 

Almost everyone in New York who goes to business 
in the morning and returns somewhere to dine and sleep 
in the evening, has his separate tale of woe to tell about the 
annoyances of urban travel. If he lives up town, along 
the line of the subway or the elevated, he hangs by a strap 
for three-quarters of an hour in going and coming ; if he 
commutes from Yonkers or beyond, he is held up for valu- 
able time in the tunnel or at the Harlem River ; if he lives 
over in Brooklyn, he is squeezed night and morning in the 
bridge and tube jams; if he comes from across the Hud- 
son, he is continually missing his boat. Staten Island is 
quite unattainable, and the back districts of Queens are 
not to be thought of. Rapid transit is a necessity, but 
somehow not yet a comfortable reality. Moving to and 
from the centers of business is still a vexation and an 
annoyance.^ 

* The report of the Public Service Commission of New York gives the 
proportions of this transit question in startling figures. The surface, 
elevated, and subway companies of New York City in 1908 carried 1,300,- 
000,000 passengers, or an average of 3,561,643 passengers a day. This is 
66 per cent more than the total of passengers carried by all the steam 
railroads in the United States. Twenty per cent of this travel takes 
place in a single " rush " hour, which accounts for the crowding of the cars. 

403 



404 THE NEW NEW YORK 

This comes about from the island nature of Manhattan. 
There is water on three sides of it and a ridge of ground 
leading out on the fourth side. The man who travels to 
business has his choice of taking to the water or the ridge. 
Neither way furnishes him with very rapid transit, because 
the one is not easily skimmed over, and the other is always 
choked with people. And so for years he has been fretting 
and fuming over the difficulty in "getting to the office," as 
he expresses it. It is all very well to boast about the 
greater city with its dozens of towns, its three hundred or 
more square miles, and its homes for everybody ; but how 
is one to reach them from the lower city? Legislative 
enactment put these outlying districts under one name 
and government, thinking to draw them closer about Man- 
hattan ; but they are still lacking in facility of communica- 
tion, in unity, in cohesiveness. 

If one considers the City Hall as the hub of the city, and 
draws a thirty-mile rim about it to include the metropolitan 
districts, it becomes at once apparent that what the whole 
wheel needs is more spokes. That would not only make 
the hub and the rim accessible, but unify and strengthen 
the entire structure. It is not necessary that the spokes 
should spread out upon the surface in new avenues and 
streets. The Baron Haussmann extravagance of cutting 
wide boulevards through the heart of Paris could hardly 
be repeated in New York ; and if it were, the new routes 
along the ridge, while improving the situation, would help 




1*1.. !»;!. I'oKi (iK()H(iF. Hv Xi(;nr 



THE LARGER CITY 405 

travel in practically only one direction. They would act 
indirectly as feeders to the bridge entrances, and in that 
way perhaps facilitate traffic in another direction, yet still 
leave much to be desired. Surface transit has its decided 
limitations. 

As for the East River bridges themselves, when they are 
all in working order, with their wide exits and entrances 
and their through trains, they will reach the Brooklyn side 
of the city quite effectively. But what will they do for 
travel to the far regions of Queens or Kings? The Man- 
hattan Bridge, with its broad avenue to the sea, will 
furnish a speedway for automobiles only, the surface roads 
do not represent rapid transit in any modern sense, and 
the elevated roads are not (or should not be) permanent 
lines of travel. And yet the need for rapid transit to the 
outer edge of the circle and beyond is a very real one. 
The poor man (barring the East Sider who loves his close 
quarters and cannot be induced to go to the country) 
wants cheaper rent, more air, and more play ground for his 
children; the rich man wants more room too, with less 
noise and dust and hurry. Almost everyone wishes to 
get out on the score of health and expense but is kept in by 
the score of time. The uppermost question is one of the 
time-table. How many minutes does it take to reach a 
given place ? If it takes forty-five minutes to go to Harlem 
and only thirty minutes to Flushing or Montclair, then the 
half-hour districts will receive the commuter majority. 



406 THE NEW NEW YORK 

This is not theory but fact — fact in process of demon- 
stration at the present time, as it has been for thirty years 
or more. In the early seventies, with only horse-cars on 
the side avenues, it required an hour or more to go from 
down town to Forty-Second Street; and during snow 
storms there were often several da3's of suspended anima- 
tion, except for foot-passengers. Washington Square, 
lower Fifth Avenue, University and Irving places were 
then the residence districts, and Fifty-Ninth Street was the 
outside limit. At that time thousands of people lived 
out of town, thirty miles or more up the Hudson or over 
in New Jersey or Long Island, because it was easier to 
reach those regions by railway than upper New York 
by horse-car. 

But a swift change came with the building of the Sixth 
Avenue elevated road in 1878. That made possible the 
reaching of Forty-Second Street from the Battery in, 
say, forty minutes at the most. The response from the 
outside districts to this invitation was immediate. The 
subur])anites flocked into the city, located themselves 
along the line of the elevated, and hung by straps morning 
and evening for a number of years in comparative content. 
Upper New York to Harlem and be3'ond was built up 
with houses, apartments, and hotels, so great was the 
inward rush of people wishing to live within three-quarters 
of an hour of the business district. Naturally the capacity 
of the elevated soon became taxed to the utmost. Electri- 



THE LARGER CITY 407 

fying the road, and running express trains night and 
morning, helped but did not fully meet the situation. 
Finally the subway was built, which furnished relief again. 
But now even the subway is overcrowded. Moreover, 
by its overcrowding, its time-making capacity has been 
reduced, and thus the very object of its building (rapid 
transit) has been, not defeated, but incompletely realized. 

Yet once again relief has been furnished, and continues 
in process of being furnished. The subway has been ex- 
tended under the East River to Brooklyn, the McAdoo tun- 
nels have been opened under the Hudson into New Jersey. 
It is now easier and quicker traveling to Long Island or 
New Jersey than to Harlem or the Bronx, and much 
cheaper living there than in upper Manhattan. Once 
more the adaptable flat-dweller and whilom suburbanite 
has responded to the new opportunity. He has no particu- 
lar pride of place or love of locality. He is a business man 
and wants the machinery of his life to produce the best 
results with the least waste of energy. So he has gone 
out half-an-hour's ride to the Oranges or Flatbush or Ja- 
maica. The result is that the strain upon the up-town 
roads is temporarily relieved ; the percentage of gain is 
now in favor of the suburbs rather than upper Manhattan ; 
the tunnels are working admirably in readjusting the load, 
as well as accommodating the people with swift service. 

Inevitably in a city like New York the hurrying crowd 
will follow the shortest and most direct route. It will not 



408 THE NEW NEW YORK 

go around if it can cut across, and it will not waste time 
if it can save it. Rapid transit is something it cannot 
get on without and continue to transact business in the 
lower city. It seems impossible to secure quick service 
on the surface. The ferry-boats are moribund, the street 
railways are for local traffic only; even the bridges are 
comparatively speaking ''short-haul" affairs, taking up 
considerably more time than the average person wishes 
to give. As for the elevated, it served its purpose for 
many years with some efficiency, and a great deal of 
noise and dirt; but it is now, or soon will be, more of a 
nuisance than a need. It belongs in the class and to the 
period of telegraph poles and overhead wires, and should 
be abolished or put underground. It was never hand- 
some, and it has never been possible to maintain decent 
streets and houses within the roar and shock of its passing 
trains. No municipal commission seeking to beautify 
the city could do much to lessen the ugliness of such a 
structure crawling through the streets. Eventually it 
will ])e taken down because the newer means of transit 
will outspeed it. 

There is very Httle doubt that the tube is the solution 
of the suburban and long-distance travel problem. It 
has been demonstrated that it can be pushed through 
almost any kind of ground. Water, quicksand, river- 
silt, solid rock, do not stop it; weather conditions and 
surface traffic do not touch it; disputed rights of way 



THE LARGER CITY 409 

and depreciation of property by noise and dust offer no 
serious menaces. It seems the ideal method of transit 
in New York because it can be run in any direction. 
Put our imaginary wheel, with its thirty- or hundred- 
mile rim, underground, build tubes along the radiating 
spokes from hub to rim, with exits at the surface wherever 
needed, and what surface-planned city of the world could 
equal New York in directness, swiftness, and ease of 
travel? With such a system the present annoyances of 
transit would vanish into thin air. 

And what a united city, a far-reaching city, would form 
above those radiating burrows in the ground ! The 
Greater New York which has an area three times that of 
London and ten times that of Paris, would then be a 
reality rather than a circle on the map. For people 
would build along the new lines of travel (just as they 
have been doing since the world began), and the new city 
would thus be knit together in a compact whole. More- 
over, its future growth for all time would be assured by 
the mere widening of the rim and the extension of the 
tunnels. There would practically be no limit to its 
expansion. 

But this plan completed would mean the greatest 
financial and engineering venture ever undertaken by any 
community. It is so vast in scale that it sounds fanciful. 
Many years of time, thousands of human lives, millions 
upon millions in money, would be required for its accom- 



410 THE NEW NEW YORK 

plishment. Probably no one alive to-day would see its 
complete fulfillment. Yet it is absolutely certain that 
New York has even now started upon some such plan. 
It is perhaps groping a little blindly, winding somewhat 
erratically in its tunnel projects down under the rock 
and water, not following the exact plan of the spoked 
wheel ; but it will find itself and eventually follow the 
shortest routes as it has always done. There seems 
nothing impossible in the venture, not even the money 
phase of it, which at one time looked rather dark.* Indeed, 
the tunnels already pushed through, equipped, and work- 
ing are the very best proofs of its possibility. 

The subway was the first accomplished fact in tunnels. 
It was opened and operated from the City Hall to One 
Hundred and Forty-Fifth Street in 1904. The next 
year it was extended under the Harlem River, into the 
Bronx, and down town as far as the Battery. Its suc- 
cess was immediate — the demand for it being demon- 
strated by its use. It has carried as high as nineteen 
million passengers in a single month, or an average of 
033,000 each day. The mere fact that it is so crowded 
(the trains follow each other almost like the buckets in a 
grain elevator) is something of an argument for its speed 
and its comfort, as well as its necessity. The express 
trains average thirty miles an hour, the local trains some- 

' Legislative restrictions in the granting of public franchises to private 
parties seemed to check new tunnel enterprises during 1908, and thereafter; 
but there has recently been renewed activity. 



THE LARGER CITY 411 

what less. The roadbed is excellent and the steel cars 
are commodious, notwithstanding they are often over- 
crowded by standing people. The air of the tunnel is 
hardly the free breath of heaven, but it is not discom- 
forting, and, apparently, not unhealthful. Nor are the 
strident hum of the electric power and the moving-picture 
flickering of lights along the walls as the train rushes by 
more than minor annoyances. The passenger soon be- 
comes so accustomed to such sights and sounds that he 
neither sees nor hears them. Of coutse the subway 
lights were never designed as an improvement upon sun- 
shine, nor its electric fans put in to rival ocean breezes. 
The road is a substitute for an open-air road, and it 
is a very good substitute, especially in wet or cold 
weather. 

Whenever an extension or connection of the subway 
is added, passengers immediately pour . through it like 
some suddenly loosed head of water. The Brooklyn ex- 
tension under the East River was opened in February, 
1908, and at once began carrying over one hundred thou- 
sand passengers a day. A similar use is sure to follow 
the projected extensions under Lexington Avenue and 
on the West Side. The more routes opened the more 
people there seem ready to use them. New ones are 
being built as fast as possible; but each year a hun- 
dred thousand new people come into the town and the 
crowd on tlie waiting platform is always growing. 



412 THE NEW NEW YORK 

The Hudson and Manhattan (or McAdoo) tunnels lead 
to the west under the Hudson River and are enterprises 
apart from the subway, and yet they are planned to 
connect with it at various points, and no doubt will 
eventually become a part of it. There are four tubes in 
the McAdoo system. Two of them pass down Sixth 
Avenue from Thirty-Third Street, across the city to the 
west at Christopher Street, and under the Hudson River 
to Hoboken, where they are continued down along the 
various railway stations to Jersey Cit}^ The other two 
tunnels are from the Terminal Building in Cortlandt 
Street to the Pennsylvania Railroad station in Jersey 
City. These four tubes are designed to carry a half-mil- 
lion passengers a day, and under stress could probably 
accommodate many more. Their extensions are planned 
as far out in New Jersey as Newark; and eventually 
they will supersede the ferries on the Hudson, in the same 
way that the bridges and tunnels on the East River have 
superseded the ferries there. 

But another tunnel system, now nearing completion, 
is of perhaps larger proportions, and of more far-reaching 
importance to the city, than anything yet projected. 
This is the tunnel and terminal project of the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad. Its two tubes under the Hudson are 
driven through and connected with its terminal station 
at Thirty-Fourth Street; the extension under the city, 
and its four tubes under the East River connecting with 




Pi,. 1)(). — I.HooKLYN Bridge fkom Ferky Shed 



THE LARGER CITY 413 

the Long Island Railroad, are completed; there are only 
the track system and station arrangements to be added. 
Then a great trunk railway will be opened under the 
heart of the city. The connection with the Long Island 
Railroad, the extension of that road through the borough 
of Queens, and the crossing from Long Island City to the 
Bronx and thus up into New England, mean exits and 
entrances to the east; while the tunnel under Jersey 
City, and the connections out beyond the Hackensack 
meadows to Harrison, mean exits and entrances to the 
west. It is a great cross-section system that will render 
possible such through railway traffic from the east, west, 
and south as has never before been known. 

The cost of this has been stupendous in time, energy, 
and money. For several years the work has gone on 
with feverish haste, men succeeding men by the thousands. 
There has been no stint of skill, science, energy, perse- 
verance in the face of stubborn circumstances that at 
times threatened defeat ; and there has been no question 
of cost with nearly a hundred millions of dollars set apart 
for the completion of the project. When the system is in 
operation, a thousand trains a day will come in at the 
Thirty-Fourth Street station. The maximum capacity 
of all the tubes is one hundred and forty-four trains an 
hour. Each train is to do no more than discharge or 
take on passengers at Thirty-Fourth Street, and is then 
to be sent under the East River to the Sunnyside yards at 



414 THE NEW NEW YORK 

Long Island City, where it is to be received and sent out 
again. 

Even though there is no storage room for cars on the 
tracks under Thirty-Fourth Street, there are, neverthe- 
less, four miles of platforms at this station to receive 
passengers, which means that the railway people are 
preparing to handle a hundred million passengers a year. 
This figure is too large for the average mind to reahze. 
We have gotten into a habit in recent years of talking 
glibly about "millions," when such figures are almost 
unthinkable. Yet the hundred million passengers of 
the Pennsylvania Railroad station under Thirty-Fourth 
Street is not only a reasonable estimate, but one that 
will surely be realized. 

The safety of the tunnels has already been sufficiently 
demonstrated. The Pennsylvania tubes are put together 
in huge iron rings, twenty-three feet in diameter, two and 
a half feet wide, and weighing fifteen tons each. They 
are strengthened by two feet of concrete, and are con- 
sidered practically indestructible. The motive power 
in all of the tunnels is electricity, and the air in them is 
very like that of the subway. In passing through them 
there is a slight descent under the river, to be noticed 
by the observant; but the average traveler does not 
know whether he is under land or water. He reaches 
his destination swiftly and safely; and that, ordinarily, 
is his only interest. He gets what he desires, — rapid 
transit, — and a very satisfactory quahty of it at that. 



THE LARGER CITY 415 

II is perhaps unnecessary to outline the further tube- 
and-tunnel projects that are under way in building, like 
the Steinway tunnel ; or are planned, like the Interborough 
and McAdoo extensions, the Broadway-Lexington Avenue 
route, the Interterminal Belt Line, the Center Street loop, 
and the Canal Street subway. The half-dozen or more 
already in existence have proved that this is initially the 
most expensive but ultimately the most economical and 
altogether satisfactory method of rapid transit that can 
be used in the greater city. The rush in toward the 
center each morning and the rush out each night must 
be accepted and provided for. The rivers, since they 
cannot be crossed quickly, should be crept under; the 
outlying districts should be brought into touch with the 
more active centers of the city and made to yield 
more service; the circle city of the map should be 
unified. 

There is very little doubt that the tunnels will be in- 
strumental in producing this. Eventually the Greater 
New York should be a homogeneous unit, brought to- 
gether and held together by an underground wheel every 
spoke of which converges and diverges from the central 
borough of Manhattan. No doubt the plan will undergo 
many changes, will be modified many times until it bears 
perhaps no resemblance to a wheel ; and yet rapid transit 
still be accomplished by following the general principle 
of radiation. 



TRAFFIC AND TEADE 



Pl. XXV. -along riverside drive 



3VI5ia 3ai2«3VIM OMOJA .VXX ..iS 




^-^'lil^LCO^;^ 







CHAPTER XXV 

TRAFFIC AND TRADE 

The ancient cities of the world were never seriously 
troubled by matters of rapid transit. They were built 
originally as places of refuge, and the inhabitants, secure 
behind walls of stone, finally adopted them as permanent 
living places. Travel through the city, and through the 
gates of the city, was largely on foot. The dusty caravan 
stopped without the walls. The camel did not pass 
through the eye of the needle. Goods were brought into 
the bazaars and the markets on the backs of porters. 
Everything moved slowly. Traffic and trade were very 
leisurely affairs in the Old World. 

Even in the present era, and in some parts of modern 
Europe, the question of time would seem of minor impor- 
tance. Haste is generally spoken of as ''unseemly," and 
travel means something of days and distance. The 
city is still a home for inhabitants, rather than a hive 
or a mart for workers. The railway, like the caravan, 
stops outside the walls. A station within the city, with 
its accompaniment of rumbling trains and roaring via- 
ducts, would be disturbing to the householders. Only 

419 



420 THE NEW NEW YORK 

a few of the larger places, like London, Paris, and Berlin, 
have admitted railways into the heart of the city, have 
put in underground tubes, and developed the more modern 
means of transit. They are slowly waking to the con- 
sciousness that a city may be more valuable as a place 
of trade than as a place of residence — a consciousness 
that has been with New York for many years. 

If the suggestion made some chapters back be accepted, 
that the city is primarily a shop or a factory, then it 
becomes apparent that to continue successful in trade it 
must be frequently remodeled or newly built. Its ma- 
chinery should be of the most modern type, and work 
with the greatest efficiency. Wide entrances to the 
business centers, direct communication for speed, huge 
buildings for capacity, unlimited markets for barter and 
sale, are necessary parts of the machinery. It is not 
possible to lead in commerce without them. New York 
quite understands this, but has always been hampered 
in carrying the idea into practice by the continuance of 
the old residential idea — the force of tradition. Re- 
cently it has begun to free itself and develop commercially, 
with vast projects for bulk and marvelous schemes for 
expedition. The turbulence of its changes and improve- 
ments has kept the older city in bewilderment for twenty 
years. It is fast fitting itself to be the one master trader 
of the world. 

This inclination toward commerce was with it at birth. 




Pi.. 97. — Wk!^t 8thki:t looking North 



TRAFFIC AND TRADE 421 

The site of Manhattan was discovered, occupied, and 
built upon by traders, because it was a place naturally 
fitted for trade. The inherited inclination has grown 
into an energy of enormous power; but without the 
natural geographical advantages of the city it might never 
have developed. The harbor with all its difficulties for 
rapid-transit engineers, is the natural highway of the 
world's ships — the inlet and the outlet of America's 
commerce. The ocean water-ways connecting with the 
inland water-ways in continuous lines of transportation, 
not only throughout the port and the country but around 
and about the globe, have made the city the logical point 
of arrival and departure. With these natural highways, 
supplemented by the railways and other transit thorough- 
fares, it is easy enough to understand how and why New 
York should become the great terminal station of traffic 
and trade. 

And be it remembered that traffic and trade are the 
breath of its nostrils. Its face has always been set that 
way. One has but to think for a moment of the vast 
equipment of commerce to be convinced of this — the 
ships, the docks, the bridges, the viaducts; the tunnels, 
subways, tramways, railways ; the elevators, storehouses, 
mills, factories; the exchanges, banks, depositories, 
treasuries; the thousands of business buildings, the 
hundreds of thousands of offices, the millions of people 
engaged in business pursuits. The great strain of the 



422 THE NEW NEW YORK 

present day is to make equipment larger, better, more 
effective. Bridges and tubes follow each other in rapid 
succession ; new channels are being dredged to the ocean ; 
the railways to the north and east are building great 
extensions; the Chelsea dock improvement and the huge 
Bush Terminal are no sooner finished than plans for 
enormous city docks in South Brooklyn and at Jamaica 
Bay are started; the subways for passengers work so 
effectively that immediately a subway for freight that 
shall put an underground water-front ring about the city 
is projected and financed. Greater enterprises, larger 
plans, more capital, more wonderful schemes, are con- 
tinually being launched; and tall buildings, each one 
more sky-scraping than its predecessor, are daily breaking 
the new sky line of the city. It is all done in the name 
of business. There is no questioning about the ruling 
passion in these dominions. 

Yet smitten with its love of money, working night and 
day for trade. New York still has time to live and enjoy 
life after its fashion. The creature comforts are indulged 
in with extravagance, by those who live along the 
mid-ridge district. What city shall you find with such 
ornate restaurants and such luxurious hotels? They 
are barbaric in their prodigahty of splendor. Where 
shall you see such richly furnished apartments and houses, 
such clubs and societies, such operas and theaters ? Again 
they are almost savage in their gilt and glitter. Where 



TRAFFIC AND TRADE 423 

shall you meet with such dresses and furs and jewels, 
such ecjuipages and liveries, such ballroom magnificence, 
such dinner-table abundance? Once more they appear 
at times semi-gothic in their pretension and arrogance. 
And yet, in spite of the suggestion that the average New 
Yorker possesses only a brain and a body, it will be found 
that he has a soul and keeps longing for higher, nobler 
things. He aspires to art, literature, and education; 
he dreams of Apollo and of the Muses ; he nurses ethical 
and social ideals, and has charity for all the world. True 
enough, he erects many sky-scrapers for business and 
frankly dedicates them to mammon, but he also builds 
many fair structures to fame and learning, and many 
high temples to God. 

These are the sharp contrasts that give the city such a 
contradictory character. They seem quite impossible 
of synthesis or reconciliation, because they are not one 
thing, but many things in one. Hence the difficulty of 
trying to summarize or epitomize either the place or the 
people. After a few generalizations one stands lost in 
wonder at the tremendous flux, the ever increasing scale 
in changes, the restless energy, the ceaseless struggle for 
greater attainment. This year we are astonished by the 
figures of passengers carried, freight handled, ships 
cleared; of bank credits, exchange clearances, trade 
balances; of buildings erected, tunnels constructed, 
streets opened. But next year the figures will be larger, 



424 THE NEW NEW YORK 

the output more enormous, the income more fabulous. 
The wonder of to-day becomes the commonplace of yes- 
terday; and still we keep mounting higher and higher, 
moving more and more swiftly. 

What shall be in the future no man dare predict, save 
in figures fantastic. With its volume and energy, its 
commerce and its wealth, who shall say what cloud-born 
fancies may not be realized in the days to come ! A few 
years ago, having outgrown its sixty-eight square miles 
on the island of Manhattan, the city expanded into an 
area of three hundred and twenty-seven square miles. 
Shall it stop there ? Men called visionaries see the future 
port of New York at Montauk Point, with all Long Island 
in the greater ring. Shall it come to pass? No one can 
say. And yet, again, without the seer's eye or the proph- 
et's ken, one can see the indication and the suggestion. 
From the high tower of the Singer or the Metropolitan 
Building the eye travels around the ring and sees water- 
ways, landways, bridgeways, railways, radiating and 
crossing, leading outward and onward ; and, following 
them closely, the new streets and buildings of the growing 
city. Who knows that the city will stop at the thirty- 
mile limit, — that it will stop at all ? 

There is indication of still other things. New York 
will be a city with perhaps more grouping about munici- 
pal, business, and traffic centers than now; but there 
is no suggestion that it will ever become a formal city, 
or like in plan to any other place that has ever existed. 




Pl. 98. — East Hivkh — Bhooklyn Side 



TRAFFIC AND TRADE 425 

That it will be a city of high buildings seems certain; 
and that it will always have its harbor setting, its bril- 
liant light and color, its sea-blue haze, and its mountain- 
blue air can hardly be doubted. The high dome and 
tower glittering in the sun, the white wall half lost in 
shadow, the background of colored minarets projected 
against the blue sky, should be heightened in splendor 
by the increase of scale. A city, magnificently pictur- 
esque, should be the result. The likeness to Constanti- 
nople should fade out as too diminutive and inadequate; 
the resemblance to some city of Arabian Nights fancy 
should grow. 

In the time to come, a quarter of a century hence, the 
traveler returning to New York may find that the age of 
wonders has not passed. The city should be more awe- 
inspiring then than ever — a city of the same hurrying 
energy perhaps, devoted to business still, leavening its 
life with the humanities here and there, aspiring to men- 
tality and even to righteousness; but always a city of 
commerce, of display, of wealth and luxury, of color and 
light. The greatest port on any sea, with the wealth of 
the Americas back of it, it should outsoar in majesty and 
outshine in splendor any other city of the modern world. 
A slighter commerce and a less virile energy heaped mag- 
nificence upon Tyre and Carthage and Rome. Why 
not the repetition of the tale, increased a hundred fold, 
in the New New York? 



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